UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Anderson’s Global Access Program Welcomes Executives from 51 International Companies

This weekend Anderson’s Global Access Program (GAP), the real-world international consulting project that takes Fully Employed MBA students beyond the classroom and into a multinational company, welcomes the 2015 participating companies to campus. It’s the first time that the assigned FEMBA teams will meet the executives at the helm of their projects.

The 11-month GAP experience and requirements constitute the FEMBA master’s thesis. Students’ bids on a given company’s project are competitive and, under the directorship of Professor Bob Foster (’65), five-person FEMBA teams are placed in the situations best matching — and requiring — their experience and skill sets. Like the 256 students making up the teams, companies must meet rigorous standards as well, and Foster says he travels overseas a good 37 days out of the year interviewing and recruiting them on site.

The 51 companies participating in 2015 are located in Finland, Sweden, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil, with three new organizations from Thailand, Poland and South Africa. Also new this year is the inclusion of two nonprofits, the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa and Australia’s Black Dog Institute, where some 50 Ph.D.s and medical doctors are focused on managing and treating mood disorders. Black Dog invited a GAP team to explore how the organization can commercialize its market-ready eMental health products and determine growth opportunities for these products, while continuing their efforts to reduce the burden mental health issues place on society.

Meet Anderson FEMBAs’ Newest Additions

RSVP for FEMBApalooza 2015!

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FEMBA student Jordan Sugar and his wife welcomed Elliana “Ellie” Grace Sugar

“Just because life gets busy does not mean that the most important things in life come to a halt,” busy FEMBA student Adam Schleyhahn (FEMBA ’15) told Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Dylan Stafford, who compiles FEMBA student and alumni news in his “What I Love about UCLA FEMBA” blog.

Stafford recently profiled Schleyhahn, who enumerated his top five FEMBA memories. These included GAP travel to Finland and Chile, as well as learning to drive a stick shift and graduating in the top 15 percent of the Anderson Honor Society. And, most memorably, his new daughter, Clara. Schleyhahn felt great camaraderie in the midst of mounting responsibilities. “There was always somebody else to talk to that knew exactly what it felt like to juggle parenthood, work and school,” he said. “It was a tough, rigorous and exhausting experience and we are all stronger because of it!”

Jordan Sugar (FEMBA’17), project manager at Southern California Edison, also celebrated the birth of daughter Ellie; and Mircea Vlaicu (FEMBA ’15), content strategist at Intuit, reflected on his top 11 FEMBA memories — chief among them the peer/mentor program he piloted under the name Vistage, and the bonus of having a new son. “Although life certainly did not get any easier after he was born,” Vlaicu said, “there is nothing that motivates me more every single day.”

Self-described “proud dad and delighted husband” Sugar — exhausted by the “whirlwind of joy, classes and group projects” he's negotiating as a new parent — told Stafford, “I am so grateful for all the support and encouragement I’ve received from my professors and classmates. We truly feel like part of the UCLA family.”

And Vlaicu concluded with an encouraging note to those who find themselves taking on multiple new challenges: “Remember that there probably isn’t a door in Los Angeles, California, and maybe the U.S. that Anderson cannot open for you.”

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Read more about FEMBA students’ travels, careers and personal milestones on Dylan Stafford’s blog, What I Love about UCLA FEMBA.

5 countries, 2 new jobs, 1 successful FEMBA: Alexander Lawrence

Alexander Lawrence (second from left) participated in an Anderson Global Immersion program in Europe. Here the group floats down the Danube in Budapest with Professor Dominique Hanssens, far left.

Anderson Fully Employed MBA (FEMBA) students love to stay in touch with Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Dylan Stafford. And Stafford avidly shares their news in his What I Love about UCLA FEMBA blog, as he did recently when Alexander Lawrence (FEMBA ’15) caught him up on his career developments and overseas travel.

“Alex was interesting before FEMBA,” blogged Stafford, “and he’s even more so now as he gets ready to graduate. We caught up recently about everything from working for the Dodgers to learning to cook empanadas in Argentina…and his great career transitions.”

Innovator Craig Kreeger (’85), CEO of Virgin Atlantic Airways: “We Have to Win on Customers’ Loving Us”

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Want to keep up with Anderson Alumni Weekend? Download the UCLA Anderson Events app from the Google Play Store or iTunes.

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

UCLA Anderson’s annual Alumni Weekend Conference, themed “Idea. Change. Impact.” opened with breakout sessions on topics ranging from smart personal finance to “Crafting a Compelling Career Narrative” to a spotlight on some of today’s most disruptive innovators. Class of 1985’s Craig Kreeger, CEO of Virgin Atlantic Airways, delivered the keynote address.

President of the UCLA Anderson Alumni Network Wendy Spinner (’89) briefly took the podium to acknowledge her fellow board members and to remind alumni to make the effort to connect with their global Anderson network. Following remarks by Anderson Associate Dean of Alumni Relations Jill Baldauf (’81) — who expressed excitement about the new Anderson Alumni Weekend app, the exclusive MBA lounge and the revival of the Anderson Beer Bus — Andy Howard (’16) introduced Kreeger.

Kreeger joined Virgin Atlantic in 2013, after 27 years with American Airlines, where he held commercial, financial and strategic roles in the U.S. and around the globe. Recruited on campus at Anderson, he joined American as an analyst not because he had always dreamed of world travel or being an airline pilot; he said he thought it was a “cool-sounding job.” And his career choice certainly panned out to become a true calling: he was appointed SVP of customer in 2012, having spent six years in London as SVP of international, responsible for operations and sales throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific.

UCLA Anderson Students on Winning Team: Koniku Takes Top Prize of $10,000 at MIT Global Startup Workshop

Koniku team members Osh Agabi (far left), Christina Salys (second from left) and Christopher McAndrew (far right) accept the grand prize in the MIT Global Startup Workshop Business Plan Competition in Guatemala City.

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By Christopher McAndrew (EMBA ’16)

Koniku Ltd., a startup focused on improving clinical trial success rates in the pharmaceutical industry, took home the top prizes at the MIT Global Startup Workshop held this year in Guatemala City and hosted by Universidad Francesco Marroquin (UFM), Guatemala. I was happy to represent the Koniku team and put into practice some of things we had studied just weeks earlier in Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation, the class taught by one of the team advisors, Anderson’s Professor George Abe.

My UCLA Anderson EMBA colleague Christina Salys (’16) entered our team in the competition after learning about the program through an email from the Price Center for Entrepreneurship. Koniku’s team represented the global nature of the program, with us as members from UCLA Anderson, along with Laura Brightmann and Mark Brown from the University of Cambridge and Oshiorenoya (“Osh”) Agabi from Imperial College London. Christina, Osh and I traveled to Guatemala to present as finalists in the Business Plan Competition that highlighted the workshop.

The Business Plan Competition was open to early-stage startup companies from around the world. With clinical trails failing over 85% of the time, Koniku developed a system, based on Osh’s Ph.D. research, that allows drug developers to replicate human organ drug interactions using “lab on a chip” technology in order to radically improve preclinical testing procedures. The competition organizers received over 120 applicants in the first round and eight finalists were selected to present their plans to a panel of judges in Guatemala. Finalists were given five minutes to present their plans followed by a three-minute Q&A session with the judging panel.

Global Immersion Course in Peru Teaches an Anderson FEMBA about International Business — and Her Classmates

 

UCLA represents atop Machu Picchu.

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By Larissa Benedek (FEMBA ’15)

During the business school application process, one quality that attracted me to UCLA Anderson was the school’s global focus. Now in my third and final year of the FEMBA program, I continue to appreciate Anderson’s emphasis on teaching students how to thrive in a connected, international business environment. Toward that goal, one of the most meaningful experiences of my MBA has been the Global Immersion course in Peru.

The course was structured in four parts: three pre‐trip sessions, one week in Peru, a post-trip session and a final exam. I found the pre‐trip classes very helpful preparation for the in-country company visits. Classes involved a combination of lectures, case discussions and guest speakers that included the director of Peru’s Trade Commission as well as the Peruvian consul general of Los Angeles. We also completed assignments to explore the history, culture and economic background of Peru. All of this served as excellent preparation for our first meeting, which happened to be with the general manager of the Peruvian Central Bank!

Easton Professor John Villasenor Testifies in U.S. Senate Hearing on Uses of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

On Tuesday, March 24, U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security, will convene a hearing titled Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Key Considerations Regarding Safety, Innovation, Economic Impact, and Privacy. Among the witnesses scheduled to give testimonial is John Villasenor, UCLA professor of electrical engineering and public policy and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Villasenor is teaching a spring quarter course at Anderson for the Easton Technology Leadership Program, where he also conducted a workshop on Bitcoin. The spring course, Intellectual Property for Technology Entrepreneurs and Managers, is included in Easton’s Current Topics: Emerging Technologies and Markets portfolio of seminar courses.

Villasenor is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Cybersecurity, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford.

The Tuesday hearing will examine broadly the potential beneficial uses for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and the efforts of the Federal Aviation Administration on safe integration of UAS in the National Airspace System. It will also explore potential privacy concerns associated with this emerging technology.

Applied Management Research Team Evaluates Educational Quality for Agastya International Foundation

By Matt Boyd, Benjamin Brockman, Matthew Jennings, Colin Scadden and Esther Su

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The team visits budding scientists in Agastya’s Operation Vasantha, in which local volunteers and young students participating in Agastya’s Young Instructor Leader (YIL) Program teach and tutor children in the village.

In December 2014, our Applied Management Research (AMR) team spent one week in India conducting primary research for our client, Agastya International Foundation. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Bangalore, Agastya is a charitable education trust whose mission is to spark curiosity, nurture creativity, and build confidence among economically disadvantaged children and teachers in rural India through hands-on science education. The purpose of our trip was to help us gain a deeper understanding of Agastya’s operations and challenges, through classroom observations and interviews, in order to help them identify how to maintain instructor and classroom quality as they rapidly expand across India.

Our field visit to Agastya began with a tour of the main campus in Kuppam, which houses a multitude of science labs, a media and art lab, library, robotics center, theater, eco-garden and even a planetarium. Yes, a planetarium! To say Agastya’s campus was top-notch is an understatement.

AMR Team Makes Actionable Recommendations for Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health

With AMR client at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

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By Alex Carey, Ledia Duka, Kunal Gupta, Anita Lin, Bianca Nicolescu

Working in partnership with the Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health (CMNH) at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, our AMR project addresses CMNH’s path to sustainable growth. Our goal is to help demonstrate CMNH’s capabilities to its stakeholders by providing recommendations for its business development and marketing plans. Our project is aimed at supporting CMNH’s continued success in helping to save and improve the lives of mothers and babies around the world.

In order to provide CMNH with actionable recommendations, it was important that we went straight to the source of information. In addition to talking to stakeholders via phone and Skype, our team took two primary research trips to visit the hubs of funding and policy-making in the U.S. and the UK.

AMR Team Helps Envision a Sustainable Breast Cancer Care Unit in Ethiopia

Elizabeth, Adam, Sandy and Ankur with Nurse Alem of the Hawassa Oncology Unit

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By Elizabeth Pratt (’15), Adam J. Foley (’15), Sandra Tesch Wilkins (’15), Ankur Agarwal (’16)

In the fall 2014 and winter 2015 quarters, our Applied Management Research (AMR) team — comprising Ankur Agarwal, Adam Foley, Elizabeth Pratt, Sandra Tesch Wilkins and Audrey Wang — worked with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York to evaluate financial and operational elements of the Hawassa University Referral Hospital Breast Cancer Unit in Hawassa, Ethiopia. The overall goal of the project is to advance the client’s vision of establishing a sustainable center for high-quality cancer care by analyzing information on and providing strategic recommendations around the development of the required capital and material and human resources.

To conduct the primary research necessary for the project, four of our team members traveled to Africa between December 14, 2014, and January 9, 2015, and focused on the following objectives: 1) develop a financial model for the oncology unit, substantiating revenue and expense numbers; 2) evaluate the feasibility of establishing a private practice within the breast cancer unit; 3) map the hospital’s procurement process for new chemotherapy drugs and equipment; and 4) explore potential mechanisms for physician retention in the breast cancer unit.