The MBA Student Voice

Over Already? Looking Back on My Two Awesome Years at UCLA Anderson

I am amazed (and a bit embarrassed!) to realize that my last post about my goings-on at UCLA Anderson was almost a year ago! But as graduation looms (what? where did the time go?!?) in a mere five weeks, it seemed a final wrap-up post about my time here at this awesome school was in order.  To get you up to speed, when I last wrote I was one quarter into my tenure as president of the High Tech Business Association and about to head off to Seattle for a summer interning as a Product Manager in the Kindle division at Amazon.com. For a look back at all my old posts, you can click here.

So much has happened since then, it’s hard to know where to begin, but I will start by saying my experience at Amazon was fantastic this summer, and I am delighted to report that I will be returning there after graduation full-time as a Senior Product Manager! Over 12 other Andersonians will be heading there too, joining the many others already at Amazon, Microsoft, T-Mobile and Nordstrom, and continuing our Seattle reach!

Josh Stark, me and Brad Lyman had awesome summers at Amazon and will be returning after graduation.

I was lucky enough to work with the Kindle team in the months preceding the launch of the next generation (Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Fire HD) on September 6, 2012. Because the team was so busy, I ended up with some pretty cool assignments, the coolest being building out a product that I got to present to Jeff Bezos. Yes, that Jeff Bezos.

"Bezos"? "War Room"? So yeah, pretty much the coolest thing ever.

Back at school, the High Tech Business Association (HTBA) continued on the upward trajectory started by the board preceding me and launching into high gear since last spring. A good overview of some of our activites and other opportunities in Tech that Anderson offers can be found in my fellow blogger Alejandra Rodriguez's post Let's Talk High Tech. One awesome event we added this year was Anderson's first ever High Tech Case Competition, sponsored by Amazon. Among the prizes winners received was guaranteed interviews with the company for summer internships or full-time positions!

Of course we promoted the case competition using social media!

Our annual Silicon Valley and Seattle Tech Treks took us to some of the most sought-after tech companies in the world - for example, over 20 in the Bay Area including Adobe, eBay/PayPal, Facebook, Google, Medallia, Salesforce, SanDisk, Twitter and YouTube.

HTBA inside the Zynga light tube!

HTBA "likes" Facebook!

We teamed with sister club the Entrepreneur Association to get more involved in the LA start-up scene, also known as "Silicon Beach." We incorporated company and incubator visits and events on campus like our Mobile in LA panel with start-up founders.

Founders from start-ups ParkMe, Shipmate, Mogreet, GonnaBe and Gumiyo

There's lots more great stuff to say about HTBA but I will let that thread continue with fellow blogger Ashley Mallinson, who is the newly elected president for the 2013-14 school year! (Unless of course she gets so busy with that position she doesn't find time to blog anymore. Not that I know anyone this has happened to.)

There were lots of awesome events at school and around Los Angeles, as always. Just this weekend was the annual Tour de Strand, a day-long pub crawl on bikes from Santa Monica to Hermosa Beach along the beach paths. Things get pretty crazy by the end of the long, sunny, fun day, but here are two SFW pictures to give you an idea:

Biking from bar three to four along The Strand.

James Vogl, Kiara Barrett, and Kevin Hofstee were the "whistleblowers" or coordinators of this year's event, and they did a fabulous job!

Also this spring, the annual AnderGLAM Fashion show completely rocked the house. Students moonlighted as models, walking the catwalk in hot fashions sourced by the Retail Management Association (RMA), to the delight of their classmates. Several administrators and professors participated in this popular event, including the school dean, Dean Judy Olian! 

Kelsey Doorey, Dean Olian, Natalie Velasco, Al Osborne (Director of the Price Center for Entrepreneurship), Sarah Alexander, Angie Lin and Kavi Kapadia pose on the red carpet.

A few other events from the year, in pictures:

The Women's Business Connection (WBC) Game Night, which included Board of Visitors member and school donor Marion Anderson (right) on the guest list!

My AMR Team made our final presentation in March after working on this project, the Anderson capstone experience, for six months. As professional and poised as we appear here, we were sooo excited to finally be done! (From left: Rob Michlovich, Jesse Pemstein, Matt Cautero, me, Uros Pajic)

Halloween has always been a favorite holiday at Anderson.

Street fair in Venice on yet another gorgeous Los Angeles day

On top of HTBA presidency, WBC vice presidency, classes, and all the rest, I still managed to run a few marathons in my free time, including Seattle in June, Santa Barbara in November (after going to New York only to have the NYC Marathon be cancelled in the wake of devastating Hurricane Sandy), Los Angeles in March, and Boston in April. My friend Dave Masterson and I took this picture at the finish line the day before the race - so chilling to think of what happened there under 24 hours later. I was so grateful to my wonderful Anderson classmates for all the support and love they showed me in the aftermath of this scary event.

Sending support and healing thoughts to everyone affected by the tragic events on marathon day.

And that is an extremely high level overview of my second year of business school. Anderson has been a wonderful experience for me - well worth the time and money involved. That said, now it's time to start making some money again so I can pay off those loans! Next stop: SEATTLE!

Enjoying a beautiful summer day in Seattle with my husband Stanton.

Thanks for joining me for the last two years, I hope I've helped more than a few of you realize that UCLA Anderson is definitely the place to be. And now it's off to the real world again, this time as an officially MBA'ed professional:

Wouldn't you hire me?

-Charlotte Baxter Maines, Full-time MBA Class of 2013

Twitter: @CharlotteK

TED at UCLA Anderson!

 

 

Hello everyone. Last week we had a very exciting event at UCLA Anderson, the second annual TED Live Streaming! TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is an annual set of global conferences about "ideas worth spreading". The topic can be anything as long as it is an innovative idea and they last at most 18 minutes so it is a fast and fun way to learn something very interesting. For example I got to listen to a talk about how music should be free and another about how the best experiences and products are those that stimulate more than one of your five senses. 

UCLA Anderson has an agreement to live stream these conferences at the campus and they designed an amazing room so students could sit and enjoy the talks. Take a look here:

 

 

Doesn't it look awesome? Those bean bag chairs were very comfy! If you want to see how they set it all up you can see that in a video here. It looks much better there; my pictures don't do it justice. 

After the live stream three or four panelist comprised of alumni, students, faculty, and industry specialists would go up on stage and discuss the TED talk to provide more insight on the subject and allow guests to ask questions. 

 

Second year Ana Peña (on the left) was moderating the panel I attended.

 

There was also a campfire at the end of the event on the third day where students and faculty would go and present their own TED inspired talks. I was not able to attend but fellow blogger Ashley Mallison did and here is what she had to say:

 

 

"The campfire was a great event. The photo is of Bhavna from our year who gave an inspiring talk about changing the way we design our cities to inside healthier lifestyles! It was a fabulous event that spoke to the power of TED and the UCLA Anderson community with great drinks and food, and black light chalk wall for people to write “What would you name your own TED Talk” and truly inspiring presentations from students and professors!"

I hope this inspires you to attend the TED Live Streaming event at UCLA Anderson next year and if you are planning to visit campus make sure to ask a current student if there are going to be any events on the dates of your visit. There is always something interesting going on at UCLA Anderson! 

 

-Alejandra Rodriguez '14
Follow UCLA Anderson at @UCLAMBA

Election time - Join the EA!

So it has once again been an eternity since I have written here but there have been a lot of things going on. When people say business school is really what you make of it they're absolutely right. For me there are four major areas that take up the majority of my time: classes, my internship at Muckerlab, my own business (which luckily partially counts for one of my classes) and most recently the Entrepreneurs Association has taken over a large chunk of my life.

The EA is the biggest organization on campus and is responsible for bringing together entrepreneurial minded people at Anderson and expose them to UCLA and the LA community to help them start businesses, get recruited at startups and learn more about entrepreneurship. This club has been an unbelievable resource to me so far and I urge any and all new studentsto join the club as it tends to have the most and the biggest events, bring in the best speakers and get the most funding. Now I'm just preaching of course and the reason for that is that I am now running the organization.

Being the biggest club on campus, the EA holds elections earlier than anyone else (including the student association) and the power transition starts very soon in the year. That means that for the past two weeks I have been running around trying to learn as much as possible about the diferent facets of the organization that I did not yet know about, putting together a team and networking with board members of the Price center and other entrepreneurship organizations around campus and LA. It's been a lot of work but I'm unbelievably excited about it and while he current EA board has done an amazing job this year, we're really hoping to jumpstart from that. We've been lucky enough to have a lot of potential candidates come through this year and talk to us about the EA so please don't hesitate to reach out at any point as we have so much to share.

-Chris Varin, 14'

Follow UCLA on Twitter @UCLAMBA

Why UCLA Anderson Is a Great Choice For B-school IMHO

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a wonderful day spent with family and friends. I know for us students, it was a welcome day off from studying as we approach finals. There are only two weeks left in the now-infamous first quarter of b-school (I say “now”—I think it was always infamous, I just didn’t really understand until I lived through it myself!), and I will admit to being incredibly ready for the holiday! That said, business school so far has been an amazing experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. And one quarter into it, I can also safely say that I wouldn’t trade UCLA Anderson for any other business school either.

Another satisfied student votes Anderson!

It’s a tough question- there are many amazing business schools to choose from, how do you know which one is best for you? Complicating things is when you get your heart set on a school and for whatever reason are not able to attend (and by whatever reason, I mean you don’t get in). I've been blogging on this site for awhile, and with luck I've built up a bit of street cred amongst our readers. So I hope you'll trust me when I say that I encourage you to consider UCLA Anderson as seriously as you would any other school, and I include the Top 3 in that as well. Why? Where do I begin…

1)      The quality of people. Every day, every hour, I am amazed, surprised, and delighted by the sheer intellect, ambition, savvy, wisdom, goal-orientation, creativity, and overall high caliber of each of my fellow students, first and second year alike. This is truly a top notch institution to have attracted such amazing talent. There is no doubt in my mind that many people I walk the halls of Anderson with today are going to be tomorrow’s Fortune 50 CEO’s, start-up darlings, and revolutionaries in the non-profit space. It's just an added bonus that everyone is also friendly & helpful, normal (loosely defined), and quite often, hilarious. (At least in Section B, the most awesome section there ever was.)

What was that about “quality of people”??

Second Year

Second year has a very different rhythm from first. This time a year ago I remember looking at a list of deliverables due in the next three weeks and having no idea how I'd survive until winter break. This year the list is daunting, but definitely survivable.

It isn't exactly that the second year is "easier" than first. (Though it probably is, insofar as I no longer have to contort my brain into accounting-speak.) Second year is equally busy; the difference is that you chose everything piled on your plate. 

One of the things I did last year, that I'm excited to do again, is Project Echo. A business plan competition for high school students, Project Echo introduces young people to every step of the process of creating a viable business. Each student team is assigned a group of MBA mentors. We advise them on how to build their business plan and help them prepare for the final competition, when each team presents their plan to a panel of judges from the community. 

Last year I had the opportunity to review many of the student business plans, and to watch a number of student groups present their ideas. It was amazing to see how far the teams had come during the months of competition, from an unformed concept to a detailed, well-informed and realizable business plan. Many of the teams have already successfully put their ideas into practice!

When it came time to decide whether to sign up for Project Echo this year, I did hesitate. So much to do, etc. But ultimately I had to recognize that Project Echo gave back everything we put into it last year and more. Gaining early experience with business and entrepreneurship will be tremendously valuable for the participating students. Plus, it was a lot of fun.

So I signed up. In a few days my team will be meeting our new students, who already have a number of great ideas for their project. I can't wait!

-- Tara Egan

tara.egan.2012@anderson.ucla.edu

@UCLAMBA

UCLA Anderson at Forte MBA Women's Conference

In 2012 the Forte MBA Women's Conference is set to be held in the Los Angeles area, but this June the Forte Foundation held its Annual MBA Women’s Conference in New York. Nine UCLA women from both the FEMBA and full-time program represented the school. Most of us flew in on Thursday evening and met that night for dinner in a cute Mexican restaurant in Soho. We had diverse backgrounds – marketing, media, PR, aerospace engineering, education, economic and pharmaceutical consulting, automotive, HR and software – yet we all shared a bond through Anderson.

Over the next two days, while surrounded by other students from top business schools, we represented Anderson and interacted with key executives, asking questions and networking with 400+ women who attended the event.

On Friday, we were coached by Jodi Glickman on perfecting our 30 second pitch, sat in on industry panels and attended a Company Expo. We listened to Uta Werner (CSO at Xerox) and Kristin Peck (Executive VP, Worldwide Business Dev. & Innovation at Pfizer) share their professional and personal stories in a panel moderated by Pattie Sellers, Fortune magazine’s Editor-at-Large. On Saturday, we followed our interests attending discussions on topics ranging from Career Acceleration to Entrepreneurship.

Many of us stayed a few extra days to enjoy the East Coast vibe of New York. 

 

The Most Bittersweet of Endings

On the morning of April 14, I wrote a blog post about the numerous conferences going on on and off campus, and inviting the broader community to join in on those conferences.

Until now, this was my last blog post, because something that afternoon occurred that has changed my life.  Forever. 

In one of my previous posts, I talked about Sari Closet, an online nationwide rental service for saris (formal South Asian women's apparel).  To recap: Sari Closet started as a class project in our Business Plan Development class.  At the end of the class, our "final" was to present our business to the class and to a group of guest venture capitalists, whose commentary / Q&A compromised the bulk of your grade for the quarter. 

The feedback we received was tremendous, to the point where one of the guests contacted us to help us get started.  We launched the business in January and went live in May. 

So on that fateful afternoon of April 14, I was in a pod at Rosenfeld Library with my classmates-turned-business partners, preparing for the Knapp Venture Plan competition that evening.  This is a business plan competition across Anderson, with the winner getting $30,000 in prize money, presumably to launch the business (although that's not a requirement). 

Nisha and I were going to present, so we dressed as best we could like fashion executives.  Patrick was dressed like an MBA student in his last quarter: a t-shirt from a band nobody has ever heard of, old jeans, and at least one tennis shoe. 

(Digression: we made it to the next round of the Knapp competition, the semi-finals.  But in this round, all of the businesses were put into different rooms based on industry, and the judges chose the best business of the ones that they saw, and that team moves on to the finals.

I didn't realize that you had to "win your room" until 20 minutes before we were supposed to present, I thought the judges all listened to the pitches, then got togeher and chose their favorites based on all of the rooms. 

But I was wrong, and naturally, we ended up in Food and Beverage.  Any muppet can figure out that a sari is neither a food nor a beverage.  But our objections were shot down (apparently, our industry room was "Retail".)  So there we were, presenting Sari Closet after two food trucks, a beer business, and a pastry shop.  Of course, we didn't win.)

So we are meant to present at 6pm, and I get the call at 4:45pm that changed everything.  It was from Mrs. V.  I left right away, and 4.5 hours later, Mrs. V and I introduced our daughter to this world.

Like I said, something happened that changed me forever.

So I never had the chance to post again to this blog, and then I graduated.

Tearfully, it is time for me to say goodbye. To the blog, and to UCLA Anderson, at least as a full-time student. I'm officially an MBA graduate, and a father. 

I'm not going too far.  I'm still dedicated to Sari Closet, and will stilll be following the sports industry closely - the sports entertainment business remains my professional passion. 

Those of you who have enjoyed my writing (all three of you) can follow me over at Perfecting the Upset, a new sports blog started by Rahat Ahmed, a friend from college, and focusing on the sociology of sports: why are we fans, what makes us tick.  There will be a heavy dose of nostalgia, plus coverage in a way that isn't blinded by commercial interests. 

I'll be focused on my beloved Washington Capitals and Manchester United, and possibly UCLA football / basketball and the Steelers, if my daughter lets me.  I'll join there later this month. 

I'll always love my two years at UCLA Anderson, and writing this blog.  It's a bittersweet good-bye for me, a time that I will always cherish and remember fondly.

Go Bruins.

 

 

Conference Season at UCLA Anderson

Today is the Conference edition of the blog - because there's lots of news on all of them! Contact me if you want details any of the events happening on campus!

* The International Food Festival is on Thursday, April 7, starting at 17:00 (that's 5pm) at Alumni Plaza here on campus.  This is where the International Business Association turns Alumni Plaza into a street market atmosphere with food stalls representing 15 different nationalities, music and dance performances from around the world, and a global selection of beverages -- all run by UCLA Anderson students!  Last year, over 500 people were in attendance.

Entry is just $20 which includes five free food tickets (additional food tickets can be purchased for $1 each).  All UCLA graduate students are welcome - from any school, not just Anderson - as are all UCLA faculty and staff.  And yes, you can bring your family!  Children's entry is just $10.

* UCLA Anderson is putting on the PULSE Conference on Friday, April 8. This is UCLA Anderson's first-ever Sports and Entertainment Conference!  The conference is a collaborative effort between the Sports Business Association, Entertainment Management Association, and UCLA Anderson's Center for Managing Enterprises in Media, Entertainment, and Sports (MEMES).

Ann Sweeney, President of Disney / ABC Television Group is the keynote speaker.  Other speakers include AEG CMO Sean Dee, WME's Head of Digital Media Chris Jacquemin, and Yahoo! Sports's Director of Product Strategy Dana McGraw, plus many more!  Check out the PULSE Conference website for more details!

* The International Business Association is working with the African-American Students Association to put on UCLA Anderson's first-ever conference about Africa!  The day will highlight opportunities to invest and grow on the continent, with a fantastic array of speakers including MobileXL CEO Guy Kamgaing-Kouam, Sterling Energy Partners CEO Clyde Sotomey, and the Consul-General of South Africa's Los Angeles consulate, Cyril Sibusiso Ndaba. The conference will be on Thursday, April 21 here on campus, starting at 14:00. 

So to recap, you could expand your business mindset around the world, learn about different cultures, and become a more global citizen, all from within the confines of our beloved university in two weeks.  Not a bad deal!

-- Sreesha

Food Festival Continues to Grow

It's been a while since the blogeteers have posted, so let me give you a bit of a fill-in as to what's happening:

* The International Business Association is busy planning the International Food Festival, where we transform Alumni Plaza into a street market atmosphere with students running food stalls from a variety of different cultures.  I'm a step removed from the planning this year versus last year, but there are already more tables lined up than last year - which means more cultures represented, more food, and more fun! The festivities will be on April 8.

* Jason Arnott has made an instant impact on the Capitals.  On the ice, he gives the Caps something that they haven't had since Sergei Federov retired: a second line that draws defenses away from Alex Ovechkin's line.  Off the ice, he's been an instant mentor to Alex Semin, and has been a vocal leader in the dressing room.  Great move.

* Dennis Wideman doesn't have Mike Green's Norris Trophy ability, but can fill in very nicely while Green is on injured reserve.

* If the Football Association really wanted to incease the development of English players in the Premiership, they should turn the Carling Cup into a competition for English players only.  This doesn't violate the EU's labour laws because the clubs can still employ anyone from the EU for their other competitions.  Plus, it would give a deeper meaning the Carling Cup, which in my eyes struggles for relevancy compared to the more coveted FA Cup.

* Air Canada's threats to pull their sponsorship of the NHL if the league doesn't address head shots more carefully is hollow given how much Air Canada gets from hockey, but it brings up another point: as the NHL gains more national prominence, the league will be under a microscope for situations that even five years ago would not have been newsworthy.

* There seems to be more of my classmates staying in Los Angeles this Spring Break than I was expecting.  I don't know if that is a function of the economy -- feels like more people have jobs at this point than last year's graduating class -- or of higher oil prices due to the situation in North Africa, but I was rather surprised.

* Of course, it could just be that the point of a Spring Break trip is to go to a warm, sunny place with lots of beaches and girls in bikinis, and Los Angeles already fits the bill. 

See you on the other side of the break!

-- Sreesha

London Calling...

Fellow blogeteer Jesse Ferlianto reminded me today that it has been a long time since I've contributed to the blog, so you can thank him for the fact that I'm going to tell you all about how I spent the US Thanksgiving holiday. 

Last weekend, while most of you were enjoying the turkey and the NFL, a motley collection of 21 UCLA Anderson students went to London for the 7th annual career trek there.  This year, I organized it alongside three classmates of mine.  The trip is in conjunction with five other US MBA programs and is cut across three verticals: finance, consulting, and the newly-created sports / entertainment.  Across all of the schools, we were approximately 80 students.

The trek was a success all ways around!  Personally, I was on the sports / entertainment verticals, and the companies were extremely receptive to us being there.  We got to meet some very senior people from a variety of exciting firms, including the NBA, NFL, IMG, ESPN, Harrah's, Disney, Paramount, Fox, and NBC Universal.  Above all else, I learned that while they all work for US-based companies, they have loads of opportunities to expand their business in Europe - in many cases, moreso than their US-based colleagues, who are facing a fragmented saturation of the American sports market. 

I'm also really happy that the finance and consulting verticals came out really well, too.  On the finance vertical, we saw Prudential M&G (the asset management arm of the UK's largest insurance company), Aerium Finance, and State Street for asset management; Carlyle and Providence Equity for private equity; and Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Nomura, Credit Suisse, and Citi in investment banking.  The feedback I got was that the companies were all stellar, and within the finance industry there was a decent amount of variety as well. 

On the consulting vertical, we saw McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, as well as Deloitte, E&Y, PWC, A.T. Kearney, Roland Berger, and Gallup.  This was the longest vertical of them all: the first meeting was at 12noon on Wednesday, and the last meeting on Friday afternoon!  But the feedback I got was that it was worth it, especially given the breadth of the companies and divsions that we visited. 

I'm also very proud of how we at Anderson did in terms of setting up meetings.  We arranged all of the sports / entertainment vertical - the Anderson alums there were nothing short of fantastic for us - as well as 2-3 headliners in both of the other verticals (McKinsey, Deloitte, Prudential M&G, Providence Equity, Credit Suisse, and Aerium Finance).  Big kudos to Abhijit, Pete, and Vivek for helping me make this trip happen.

More than anything, I think we showed a lot of multinational companies that, contrary to popular belief, Anderson students are willing to seek out job opportunities outside of LA. We came prepared, had great questions, and were extremely professional as much as possible. 

One thing that US MBA programs are known for are these sort of career treks, where you get to visit a variety of companies in different verticals.  Anderson frankly has been lagging other schools in this endeavour, but hopefully as the London trip continues to expand, we will be able to catch up.  Organizing the trip is extremely rewarding because it gives you direct contact with all of the people that you want to keep up with anyway -- so now you have delivered something for them, which differentiates you from the rest of the crowd.

Bottom line: these are the trips that are so critical to the MBA experience, and this one in particular is one that you should keep in mind for next year should you get the chance to join us here in Westwood. 

Reach out to me off-line if you want more details!

-- Sreesha