UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

UCLA Anderson TED Week: Campfire Finale

Check out photos from the entire TED Week at Anderson!

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By Bijan White and Cheechee Lin

Last week’s exhilarating panel discussions and individual talks by leaders in the most eclectic fields culminated in UCLA Anderson’s live TED Week Campfire Talks. The late Thursday sun highlighted an elaborate outdoor stage, where several Anderson faculty and students spoke about personal experiences, endeavors and accomplishments in presentations that emphasized their individuality and the diversity of the Anderson community.

Devon Kelley (’16) shared his story of a summer working with the Israeli national lacrosse team. Kelley spent his days training and working in Tel Aviv amid violence and terror, which gripped the regions surrounding the Gaza Strip. However, despite the ever-present threat of violence, Kelley said, the people of Tel Aviv found solace in their community. He found it in the camaraderie of sport. And he said it could be a viable path to peace:

What if, just one in ten of every instance of a Jew and a Muslim coming together to a game of lacrosse — what if, one in ten of those started with catch and turned into laughter, which turned into friendship, which turned into understanding, which turned into trust, which turned into peace?

UCLA Anderson TED Week: The Power of Storytelling to Bridge Cultures and Generations

Photo: James Duncan Davidson/TED

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By Claudia Varney

TED Week at Anderson’s final day of presentations kicked off with a panel on life stories. Radio producer and StoryCorps founder Dave Isay discussed his mission to capture the stories of everyday people, and his vision to make crowdsourcing of storytelling possible through StoryCorps’ smartphone app, a TED Prize winner. He began this work when he interviewed people who had participated in the 1969 Stonewall Riots, and he found that his understanding of the lives of the LGBTQ community was fundamentally changed.

Isay’s narrative created a kaleidoscope of emotions through a range of moving conversations, including those between a mother and her son with Asperger’s, a reformed gang member and the mother of a man he killed, and a transgender woman talking to her daughter about her transition. Isay founded StoryCorps to encourage the use of storytelling to bridge people of different backgrounds for greater shared understanding. He dares to envision StoryCorps’ archive and use growing to the point where entire generations are encouraged to interview an elder in their community and learn their histories.

UCLA Anderson TED Week: Out of this World

By Manuela Reyna and Christian Ayers ('16)

“Every star in our sky is a sun,” said Sara Seager, professor of planetary sciences and astrophysics at MIT, in her TED talk themed “Out of this World.” Seager’s theory is that, statistically, each of these stars has at least one planet orbiting around it. She is continuously looking for properties that would identify earth-like planets — but they lie literally thousands of years away.

Seager explained how space exploration has shifted from sending probes into outer space to launching advanced telescopes that analyze the “spectroscopy” that measures gases in planets’ atmospheres. MIT is developing “starshade” prototypes that a telescope could release to block out a sun’s light to make planets more visible. The discovery of extraterrestrial life likely won’t come in the form of flying saucers or interplanetary war, she assured the audience, but rather through the meticulous study of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. Seager’s research centers on hypotheses based on the atmospheric composition of these faraway worlds.

The Anderson panel delved into the future of space flight and offered their insights into the public and private development of space travel, covering developments as diverse as the miniaturization of payload cargo and the future role of robotics in space. Panelists Brad Hansen, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, Amir Blachman (’03), managing director of the Space Angels Network, and Dr. Thomas Yunck, a 20-year veteran of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and founder of Geo Optics, helped the audience understand the scale of the business of space. They said governments can sustain investment into space exploration because of the high ROI. And companies that want to see their ideas about space exploration come to fruition are more likely to receive funding by making the essential smaller components of spacecraft they may not be able to produce in toto.

Students asked very insightful questions about the facts of physics and math, the existence of a supreme being, and where the smart money is being invested and how starshade prototypes can be applied to everyday life.

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This year's TED conference convened in Vancouver, Canada, under the theme Truth and Dare. The fourth annual TED Week at Anderson brings together the UCLA community to share ideas that change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world.

Check out the UCLA Anderson TED Week schedule

Follow us @UCLAAnderson #TEDweekUCLA

Our Flickr album puts you at the center of activity

UCLA Anderson TED Week: Asking "What Is Cancer?" to Trace Humans' Battle against an Ancient Disease

By Christian Ayers (’16)

On Tuesday Anderson panelists Nataraj Kalyanaraman, a health care consultant for PwC, and Andre de Fusco, CEO of Cynvenio Biosystems, led a lively discussion on the future of oncology. They explored how the practices that were developed in humans’ fight against cancer have been applied to other recalcitrant challenges.

Anderson MBA/MPH candidate George Buckley (’16) moderated the panel, which was a response to “Radical Reframe,” the theme of a TED talk by world-famous oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies (recently adapted as a documentary film). Mukherjee recounted the history of humanity’s battle with cancer and the myriad medical breakthroughs that have resulted from our struggle to defeat an ancient illness.

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This year's TED conference convened in Vancouver, Canada, under the theme Truth and Dare. The fourth annual TED Week at Anderson brings together the UCLA community to share ideas that change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world.

Check out the UCLA Anderson TED Week schedule

Follow us @UCLAAnderson #TEDweekUCLA

Our Flickr album puts you at the center of activity

UCLA Anderson TED Week: Keeping Up with the Extraterrestrials, Timing Your Success, and Engineering Romance

By Bijan White

The second day of TED Week at Anderson invited us on an exciting mission through the cosmos to search for alien life. According to MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, this search is not as desperate as we once thought. The screening room was thrown into a whirlwind of color as Seager led us through galaxies of red stars and planets that could potentially be teeming with life. The possibilities are endless, to hear Seager tell it: “Kepler 186f could theoretically hold life forms, but all the plant life would be red because it orbits the red dwarf star Kepler 186,” she merrily explained and she launched us into a new planetary system. With roughly 500 billion galaxies in the universe, the number of planets reaches well above 5x1022, and Seager insists that some of them must contain life.

The Anderson panelists were skeptical. Dr. Thomas Yunck, founder of GEO Optics, reminded the audience of the extremely specific and independent conditions that led to the development of life on Earth and that are highly unlikely to reoccur. The panelists launched into a discussion of the application of space programs to our earthly activities. Amir Blachman ('03), managing director of the Space Angels Network, commented on the interdisciplinary nature of space research and its application to telecommunication, weather reporting, and the cross examination of atmospheres. Whether or not life is to be found beyond this world, space programs remain vital to understanding and monitoring our own planet. And the industry is experiencing a process of privatization in which startups are gaining importance.

UCLA Anderson TED Week: Anderson Alumna Martine Rothblatt Might Just Be a Little Bit Crazy

Bina Aspen and Martine Rothblatt spoke at TED2015 – Truth and Dare in Vancouver, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman/TED

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By Cheechee Lin

Dressed in a sharp suit, triple Bruin Martine Rothblatt (’81) exudes confidence as she walks onto the TED stage, ready to discuss her work and life. Although her strides are straight and true, she has not followed a conventional path. 

Rothblatt transitioned from Martin to Martine in 1994. At TED Rothblatt declared, “My soul was always female, but I was afraid that people would laugh at me, so I kept it bottled up.” In response to her transition, her younger daughter, who was five years old at the time, proclaimed, “I love my dad — and she loves me.” Rothblatt’s spouse, Bina Aspen, whom she married in 1982, fully supported her decision, saying to Rothblatt, “I love your soul, regardless of whether that be Martin or Martine.”

Rothblatt is now an outspoken advocate of transgenderism. “There are seven billion unique ways to express one’s gender,” she said. “People should be free to choose whatever gender they want, if only we were not forced into categories by society. I change my gender as often as I change my hairstyle.”

UCLA Anderson TED Week: Diabetic Turns Around Her Health and Embraces Wearable Technology

By Christian Ayers ('16)

What is the future of wearable technology? Laurie Coots, a busy executive who beat Type 2 diabetes and regained control over her health, delved into a far more interesting set of potential applications than just fitness tracking software. Exciting breakthroughs in medical applications have been made possible with the advent of wearables technology, and Coots predicts these products will radically change our approach to our own personal health care in the coming years.

UCLA Health is at the forefront of wearable health products. Resident experts William Kaiser Ph.D., Eve Glazer, MD, and Daniel Hommes, MD, Ph.D., guided us through UCLA’s proprietary research and development in wearables product design. Moderated by Jennie Kung, project manager for UCLA’s Institute for Innovation in Health, the panel illustrated the broad potential for wearables to fundamentally change individual health and the health care system at large.

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This year's TED conference convened in Vancouver, Canada, under the theme Truth and Dare. The fourth annual TED Week at Anderson brings together the UCLA community to share ideas that change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world.

Check out the UCLA Anderson TED Week schedule

Follow us @UCLAAnderson #TEDweekUCLA

Our Flickr album puts you at the center of activity

Experience TED Week at UCLA Anderson

In its second day, TED Week at UCLA Anderson is proving energetic — and photogenic! Check out our Flickr album of shots from the center of the activity: 

TED at Anderson 2015

The TED Week schedule is still packed with inspiring presentations and panels, culminating in Thursday’s campfire event, featuring live TED talks by Anderson students and faculty who share success, think fearlessly and drive change.

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This year's TED conference convened in Vancouver, Canada, under the theme Truth and Dare. The fourth annual TED Week at Anderson brings together the UCLA community to share ideas that change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world.

Check out the UCLA Anderson TED Week schedule

Follow us @UCLAAnderson #TEDweekUCLA

UCLA Anderson TED Week: Creatively Turning Dreams into Reality

 

Moderator Lisa Nestor ('15) with entrepreneurs Ben Nemtin and Rosie O'Neill ('05).

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“All you need is that moment of insane bravery — to go with it and create something.”
   — Ben Nemtin, Four Peaks Media Group

By Cheechee Lin and Bijan White

The UCLA Anderson Executive Dining Room has been transformed. In its place, a suave lounge bathed in lush blue light with white cushions strewn across the floor signals the 2015 TED Week at Anderson. As students fill the room, the projectors come alive and illuminate the walls, streaming presentations about the eccentric, innovative and outlandish work of the most non-ordinary of individuals. As the red and blue lights gently dim, the crowd awaits with baited breath as fashion designer Hussein Chalayan takes the stage and speaks eloquently of his journey of inspiration.

Chalayan leads us through dazzling and at times disconcerting memories, art expositions and fashion shows. Chalayan’s work, a manifestation of his sentiments of detachment and separation, takes the form of cutting-edge designs blurring the lines between art, fashion and commercial design. Centered on the independent female figure caught in a perpetual state of transition between physical spaces, Chalayan’s designs feature pieces exploring technology, politics and architectural forms.