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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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.

Global Field Study Students Apply Social Impact Focus to After-School Programs in South Africa

GAP Team 33 met with staff and students outside of Johannesburg at the Boys & Girls Club of Pimville, which is run by UCLA Anderson alumna Laura Parker (’13). Top row: Jamie Nichols, Sne Vilakazi, Courtney Reed, Kitty Moepang, Christina Lebo Tlhabanyane, Dominque Akens. Bottom row: Laura Parker, Chloe Vieira, Diamon Lockett, Tumi Ramasodi.

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By Dominique Akens, Diamon Lockett, Shaurya Nanavati, Jamie Nichols, Courtney Reed, Chloe Vieira (FEMBA Class of 2018)

Our Global Access Program field study focused on increasing support for after-school programs in South Africa. We addressed some of the country’s problems stemming from its broken education system, gang violence, teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS prevalence and unemployment.

Supported by UCLA Anderson’s Center for Global Management, we partnered with two clients — Boys & Girls Clubs of South Africa and The Learning Trust ― who believe after-school programming can fill gaps in the education system and help lift South African children out of poverty. We operated on the assumption that involving more youth in after-school programs (“ASPs”) would make them safer, strengthen their educational performance and broaden their post-educational opportunities.

We embarked on a thesis project that was markedly different from those of our Fully Employed MBA GAP peers, whose projects traditionally entail finding new growth opportunities for corporate clients, typically technology companies. Our team has over 20 collective years of experience in the nonprofit and education sectors, and we felt strongly that our thesis project should reflect our interest in social impact. We developed a map of after-school programs in the Gauteng province of South Africa, researched effective after-school programming methods and recommended strategies to build the sector and reach more youth in the country.

From Short-Term Metrics to Procurement and Distribution, What a Food Bank Can Learn from the For-Profit Sector

Foodbank of Santa Barbara County COO Jamie Nichols visits a site participating in the organization's Backyard Bounty program, which gleans excess produce from neighborhood fruit trees and orchards

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During Impact Week (April 17–21, 2017), whose theme is Purpose + Profit, UCLA Anderson is highlighting stories of mission-driven careers, companies and projects that fulfill unmet needs in sectors from e-commerce to cleantech.

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By Jamie Nichols (FEMBA ’18)

I’m going to go out on a limb by suggesting two ideas about the nonprofit and social service sectors: 1) There are plenty of well-intended, poorly run nonprofits whose extremely admirable missions prevent them from going under; 2) most nonprofit professionals have a chip on their shoulder about how comparably straightforward measuring value and success seems in the for-profit realm. This can lead to a near-fanatical emphasis on fundraising as a proxy for impact or to a reduction of value solely in for-profit terms (whether it be service dollars provided, units served or gross income).

So, how can we actually measure meaningful impact in the long term, and how is this reconciled with the more immediate returns promised to donors? The focus areas of many nonprofits and impact-oriented firms ― for example, education, health and the environment ― are long-term investments by design, and the ROI can take years or decades to be realized. Is it irresponsible to dismiss short-term metrics in favor of longer term faith? Is the nonprofit sector responding to poorly designed systems better addressed by the government and for-profit market?

UCLA Anderson Alumna Kate Cochran Recognizes the Entrepreneurial Spirit that Creates Jobs for the Poorest of the Poor

By Isha Patel

For six years, Upaya Social Ventures has helped 12 companies create over 4,100 new jobs for people living in impoverished areas in India. Upaya CEO Kate Cochran (’97) joined Impact@Anderson’s High Impact Tea series to share her experience and future goals for the nonprofit.

Cochran started out in management consulting and realized her passion for international development later in her career at an event for Unitus Labs. For several years, she served as VP of finance and operations, and later as VP of external relations for the organization, which makes seed-stage equity investments in social enterprises to benefit people living at the base of the economic pyramid. She went on to become COO and board member at Vittana Foundation, with whom a UCLA Anderson Applied Management Research field study team collaborated in 2014 on a microfinance-driven student loan project. Eventually, Cochran's long tenure in the nonprofit sector would lead her to Upaya.

An advocate of advancing entrepreneurship, and passionate about international development, Cochran has taken time to fine-tune strategies that allow Upaya to invest in viable companies capable of employing people in impoverished areas. When asked about Upaya’s impact in Indian communities, Cochran simply stated, “We create jobs for the poorest of the poor.”

South Africa Global Immersion Makes Social Entrepreneurship Standard Curriculum

In South Africa, UCLA Anderson students toured the entrepreneurial development Philippi Village, where repurposed shipping containers provide space for shopkeepers’ stores, from hair salons to appliance sales. Back row, left to right: Lisa Tang (FEMBA ’18), Mark Reidy (FEMBA ’17), Milan Karunarante (FEMBA ’18), Bradley McGough (FEMBA ’18), Justin Vu (FEMBA ’18), Alex Lieu (FEMBA ’17), a local entrepreneur, Adrian Colesberry (EMBA ’17), Frank Mikel (EMBA ’17), Mike Levine (EMBA ’17). Front row, left to right: Graham Pulliam (FEMBA ’17), Jonathan Chow (FEMBA ’17), Rachel Luskin (FEMBA ’18), Nikki Strenk (FEMBA ’18), Stephanie Celotto (FEMBA ’18), Tae Macias (EMBA ’18).

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

In September 2016, 40 UCLA Anderson students traveled to South Africa for a global immersion course titled Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Led by UCLA Anderson lecturer Gayle Northrop (’96), president of Northrop Nonprofit Consulting, the course focused on how “pro-social” businesses succeed in an age of waning corporate philanthropy. Northrop, who also serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and co-founded Cape Town’s Spark Health, says students may gravitate to immersion courses because of the international destinations, but her hope is that global examples of social and corporate responsibility will infuse b-school curriculum generally.

UCLA Anderson’s global immersion courses originated in 2008 within the Fully Employed MBA program. Since then, they have expanded to include students in the full-time, executive and UCLA-NUS Global Executive MBA programs. In 2014, the global immersion courses transitioned to the Center for Global Management to enhance the portfolio of global offerings to students across all MBA programs.

“This experience opened my eyes to the amazing work being done by social impact organizations around the world and inspired me to get involved in the field,” said Milan Karunaratne (FEMBA ’18), who joined the South Africa immersion. “I would never have had such an authentic and enriched experience if I had visited South Africa as a tourist.”

In South Africa, a Veteran of Nonprofits Changes His Mind about Social Entrepreneurship

 

Cape Town, South Africa, offices of social innovator RLabs, which trains local at-risk youth in technology and entrepreneurship and whose motto is "Making hope contagious" 

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By Robert Young (FEMBA ’17)
Photos by Mark E. Lee (FEMBA ’17)

Coming from a background in service-based nonprofit fundraising, I was skeptical of social entrepreneurship as a way to effect change. Since serving in the Peace Corps for three years, I’ve had an additional nine years’ experience working in nonprofit organizations as a fundraiser, including in my current job handling fundraising logistics at an independent school in Culver City. Until recently, it had always seemed to me that the most efficient way of ensuring that positive change reached those who needed it was via an organization that didn’t care about financial returns and used traditional, proven remedies.

Last summer, I was lucky enough to be a part of a UCLA Anderson Global Immersion course in South Africa, led by Gayle Northrop. After the first couple of days visiting companies and organizations in Johannesburg and Capetown, my thoughts on efficient organizations changed entirely. I now understand the significant advantages that social innovation and entrepreneurship can bring to places where traditional philanthropy just can’t do enough.

The first breakthrough came in a visit to AllLife Insurance, a firm in a suburb of Johannesburg that specializes in delivering life insurance to HIV-positive South Africans. Ross Beerman, the CEO and founder, told our group he had never thought of himself as a social innovator or entrepreneur. Instead, he saw a life insurance market gap (nearly 20 percent of South Africans are HIV positive) and simply wanted to run a successful business in which the positive externalities dramatically outweighed the negative.

Alumnus Lighting Up An Entire Country

By Shawn Hakim (’14)

The Dominican Republic, famous for having some of cleanest beaches in the world has an untold story: More than 9 million Dominicans live each night in a state of darkness – with roughly eight million Dominicans facing nightly blackouts and one million more living off the grid entirely. The lack of light hits people of all ages but impacts impoverished children the hardest. Many of them have to work shining shoes and washing cars after school to help their families, and do not get home until 8 or 9pm. They arrive to a dark home with no light to study with; leaving them with very little chance to break the chain of poverty.

After food, water, and shelter – light is the next basic human need … and that’s what my Dominican Co-Founder, Jacqueline Gallardo, and I are set to bring to the entire Dominican Republic. We met while I was attending UCLA Anderson, where I was looking to apply my business acumen to create a positive impact in the world. In my off time at Anderson, I read an article stating how solar lanterns are changing the daily lives of millions of people around the world. Less than a few weeks later, I was on a connector flight going to Panama when I met Jacqueline. We instantly clicked, both expressed interest in impacting the world, and I shared my findings of the solar lanterns with her.

She was shocked as the solar lanterns fit as virtually a perfect solution to the Dominican people’s deep need for light. Within a few months everything fell in place – it felt like a calling – we started our social enterprise, Esenciales J.S. SRL.

UCLA Anderson's Health Care Institute: Creating Impact In the Field

By Bhavna Sivanand ('14)

While Anderson hosts Social Innovation Week on campus this week, showcasing the power of business to improve social outcomes and create positive change, I can’t help but reflect on the various organizations I interacted with last week that have health outcome improvement at the forefront of their organizational mission and whose staff work tirelessly to create impact. Last week I had the privilege of attending the first of a series of trainings hosted by UCLA Anderson’s Health Care Institute (HCI) in Albuquerque, New Mexico supported by a five-year federal grant.

In the room sat more than 100 participants representing 27 Head Start and Early Head start agencies, out of a total of 150 agencies that applied to go through the five-year cohort training. The training they received last week was to set them up for success in delivering their own health literacy trainings for low-income families of Head Start. They heard lectures and engaged in workshops on various topics, including: strategic planning, marketing, getting stakeholder buy-in, and creating staff and parent motivation and engagement. They also sat through a mock parent training they are meant to emulate in their communities when they return home.

Architects of Change Returns to UCLA Anderson Featuring Music Mogul Russell Simmons

By Cheechee Lin

 

“I am a conscious idealist that works for change starting from myself."

Hip hop mogul and businessman Russell Simmons joined journalist Maria Shriver for her Architects of Change series at UCLA Anderson.

Simmons’ best-selling book, The Happy Vegan, is widely-acclaimed as an accessible and inspiring guide for readers looking to move towards a plant-based diet and a happy, purposeful life. Simmons rose to fame by co-founding Def Jam Recordings, quickly propelling him to the top of the hip hop industry. Yet the man who sat down for an intimate chat with Anderson students in Korn Hall spoke of a simple life.

“Happiness comes from inside,” Simmons said. “Operating from a place of needing nothing— that’s happiness. No matter how rich you are, you can only sit your a-- in one seat at a time. The goal of life? To be comfortable in that one seat. Only when you are awakened with clarity can you be present and focus on the job. We are ever evolving to be more present, and more awake.”

Simmons describes his thought leadership through his influence on his fans. “As a [celebrity], you can say sh-- and it travels. You can affect change in many ways, and your efforts in every area become more fine tuned as you become awakened,” he said.

“You’re a different type of leader when you envision a different type of success. It’s empowering to take on philanthropic endeavors.” Simmons is an outspoken voice promoting a plant-based lifestyle. “The abuse of animals is destroying our planet at a rate we don’t know how fast— and we’re on a trajectory we don’t know how to stop. The water used to produce one hamburger is the equivalent of 70 showers. By changing your diet, you are not only helping yourself, but helping the planet. You’re in LA, and eating vegan has never been easier!”