Sunday Breakfast with the Flexers

Sunday morning I joined the FLEX breakfast (along with my seven-year-old who happily ate bagels and watched the iPad) to witness the launch-weekend atmosphere of FLEX. I also gathered a few great perspectives from FLEXers to share with you.

Karen Shang ’17.  Karen a brand new FEMBA and the mother of a three-year-old and a one-year-old. Karen works in accounting/finance and was actually admitted last year, but postponed to be with her second child.

Regarding adding UCLA to her already full life, she told me, “While everyday life with work and kids could be exhausting and even draining at times, being a part of such a dynamic learning environment re-energizes me… this is my space where I feel replenished and stimulated intellectually…Believe it or not, I’m working on starting a LinkedIn profile. I’ve always been so wrapped up in my jobs that I never really invested any time in networking, but I definitely plan to take on the opportunity to network extensively here at UCLA, especially with the intent of transitioning into the education consulting sector within the area of finance/accounting.”

Ola Dokun ’17 is an IT Process Delivery Specialist at The Walt Disney Company. UCLA Anderson will be her second master’s degree. We talked about the crazy ramp-up that the first quarter of FEMBA requires.

Ola told me, “I would say if you are going to do the Femba program you probably will have a lot of constraints with time and structure around work and personal life. Flex gives you that added Femba bonus to pick and choose what time and pace to learn anywhere you want with deadlines of course that prevents procrastinating and creates discipline. There is an assumption that the Flex section is for people who don’t live in the LA area but a handful of us live only a couple of miles from UCLA so we still get to benefit from attending the extra curricular events weekly. I love the schedule!”

Rebecca Stolz ’16 is Assistant to the President of Occidental College. She was in all-day Saturday for her first year of FEMBA, but has moved into the FLEX section because her five-year-old daughter Grete has begun school and it works better for her family and work to use the FLEX format for classes. Later Rebecca sent me these photos of Grete. Look how many FEMBA events Grete’s attended with Mommy!

Grete, Rebecca’s daughter, with Katie Kroeger-Davis ’16 at FEMBApalooza 2014, with matching butterfly face paintings.

Grete with Mommy’s friend Nancy Yao ’16, in the bounce house at FEMBA Section Wars

Grete, running in the light blue outfit, inspecting Mommy and her FEMBA classmates at Section Wars, 2014

Anthony Patterson ’16 is a Senior Associate at Revel Consulting. Anthony commutes from Seattle and he explained the value to me, “FEMBA FLEX has been a great experience that I didn’t discover during my initial search for an MBA program. Not being sure if I wanted to stay in Seattle long-term, I wanted an MBA with a more global brand, but wasn’t ready to move my life across the country. FLEX offers the same experience and instruction as other programs, but allows for flexibility to maintain consistency in my life week-to-week. I find myself looking forward to flying to So-Cal once a month to get some sun and learn with my classmates.

It’s a great way to immerse yourself in an MBA, but on focused weekends instead of each week. Many of us look forward to our sunny weekends in Westwood!”

Vinay Kondapi ’16 is a Product Manager at Impinj. Vinay, along with Anthony, is also commuting from Seattle down to UCLA and for him joining FEMBA turned out to be great accelerator for his career.

“Dylan, it’s already happened for me!” Vinay told me Sunday. “I wanted to switch out of engineering and into product management and it’s already happened, within 3 months of joining FEMBA. Immediately after getting admitted to UCLA Anderson, I attended a career seminar for FEMBA students and quickly learnt that I don’t need to wait until I complete my MBA to switch into product management.

UCLA Anderson’s brand name is well recognized in the industry and the fact that I am admitted into business school served as a proof that I am serious about my career switch and got me interviews for product management positions. FEMBA Career coaches -Gordon Hill & Susan Cowell– helped me understand my career choices, position and switch into product management career. In hindsight, joining FEMBA turned out to be a key decision which accelerated my career.”

I felt like a proud father, hearing about Vinay’s success. He also emailed me a photo he prizes, from the Ropes Course of Leadership Foundations.

Vinaky Kondapi ’16 during Leadership Foundations last year. Vinay’s already made a successful career leap, during FEMBA, with support from Gordon Hill and Susan Cowell in Career Services.

Rachel Fang Fang ’16 is Owner and CEO of CN Winners, Inc.

Bonus interview! Rachel isn’t in Flex, but she happened to be on-campus to study and I got to speak to her too. Rachel is a successful entrepreneur already and she’s got several “what’s next” ideas percolating. I love talking to serial entrepreneurs. It’s always inspiring and stimulating, the way they’re always focused on the future, and making things happen. She also told me about a classmate who just got married: Congratulations Jordan!

My final breakfast conversation was with the one-and-only George Ingersoll ’09, Director of Hybrid Learning Initiatives at UCLA Anderson School of Management.  George earned his UCLA Anderson MBA back in 2009, and now is in our PhD program while he simultaneously works as the Director of Hybrid Learning. George has been instrumental in launching FLEX and improving it. FLEX wouldn’t be half as great as it is without George.

George Ingersoll ’09 and Rebecca Stolz ’16, at the FLEX breakfast on Sunday.

That’s it for me from Sunday morning with the FLEXers. My son Jackson loved his yummy breakfast at Daddy’s work, plus his iPad time. We scooted out of there and were able to catch up to Mommy at church. Life at the speed of FEMBA!

3 case competitions, 2 first-place finishes: Nick Salameh ’16

At FEMBA Council last month, someone told me of a success story about Nick Salameh, FEMBA 2016, who had entered three case competitions his first year, and won in two. I reached out to Nick to learn the full story.

Dylan: Well Nick, this is quite an accomplishment, three case competitions in your first two quarters. Tell our readers about yourself, and the competitions.

Nick Salameh ’16, at the Net Impact Consulting Challenge

Nick: Great. I’m a FEMBA 2016 currently living in San Diego. I graduated from SDSU (Go Aztecs!) in 2011 with major in finance and I work as a commercial credit analyst at California Bank & Trust where I am responsible for underwriting commercial loans to middle market corporations and commercial real estate investors ranging in size from $1 million to $10 million+. You may be able to confirm this, but I think I might be the youngest member of FEMBA 2016 (I turned 25 this year).

Dylan: We never evaluate age Nick, only experience; you are wise beyond your years.   We’re glad you’re in the Class of 2016. Tell us more.

Nick: Here at Anderson I am pursuing a career shift into either Management Consulting or Investment Banking (still torn) and was recently selected as the VP of FEMBA Relations for the Management Consulting Association.

I have been so impressed by every aspect of Anderson thus far and get excited every time I think about school and the future. I am very competitive and this drives me to do well in all aspects of my life, and I feel that Anderson has been able to provide me with the level of challenge I was looking for to push my boundaries.

I have had such a great experience thus far and have done my best to take advantage of all of Anderson’s resources and have already made some great friends and memories (FEMBA Vegas trip…). I cannot wait to make even more friends and participate in other aspects of Anderson such as the international studies courses, OCR [on-campus recruiting], and more social events.  

Here’s a summary of the three case competitions that I have participated in. We placed first in the Joint Venture Challenge and also in the Net Impact Consulting Challenge:

The Joint Venture Challenge was a real estate case competition where I was randomly paired with a Law student and a full time MBA student. It lasted about a month and in total I probably contributed 40+ hours of work. It was very analytical and there was a lot of case material to read through. I never actually met my two teammates as I live in San Diego and they are both not on campus on weekends, but we made it work surprisingly well and I’m even kind of friends with the law student now (Still haven’t met the guy but we are supposed to grab a beer next quarter).

In total I spent about 6 hours on the phone with my two team mates (3 total calls). In this particular case, there was a lot that could be divided since all three of us had a fairly strong background/understanding of the material related to the case. The final deliverable was a 10 page write up addressing the 14 legal and business questions provided in the case. We did not actually have to present our answers in person. I learned a significant amount about Private Equity Real Estate Funds from this experience which I feel will help me in my future real estate endeavors both personally and professionally. Also great networking opportunity.

The NFL Digital Media Challenge was my least favorite case, although I feel it could have been my favorite. I formed a team randomly when someone posted on Facebook, and the case was extremely quick. In total, we had 5 days. My group of 4 met via Google hangout twice and met once for an entire Sunday (about 7 hours). In total I put in about 15 hours. The direction that my team decided to pursue was one that I was very much against, especially since I felt very confident in my idea (I know… bias right?).

Although I was impressed with our final product I was fairly confident that we would not be selected for the final round, and we were not. We would have gotten to present on the NFL Network stage if we had made it to the final round. There were 6 teams that made it to the finals from 4 schools. Overall it was still a good experience that took me out of my comfort zone. Also it was cool simply because I’m a huge NFL fan.

[Readers: The NFL Digital Media Challege was actually created by FEMBA ’14 Josh Schachter, and you can read that story here.]

The Net Impact Consulting Challenge lasted about a month and I formed a team with the two classmates that I carpool up with each week (Nadine Martini and Victoria Verstegen) and another woman in our section from Huntington (Katie Kroeger-Davis). Our team was extremely strong as a result of our diverse backgrounds that paired well with our assigned non-profit organization. In addition, the dedication and buy-in of our assigned organization, Worksite Wellness LA (WWLA), was paramount to our success.

This case required a lot of hours. I drove up to LA from San Diego for the Kick-Off event (a 3 hour meet and work session with WWLA) on a Wednesday night, we met with WWLA one night after class in LA until 11pm, we spent several hours conferencing with Worksite Wellness LA, and we countless hours working as a team. Not including the actual case presentation day I personally spent close to 50 hours.

We collected a ton of data and really discovered what WWLA wanted and needed and ultimately were able to deliver a very comprehensive and implementable set of recommendations along with the necessary tools to achieve their goals. We presented twice on the final day of the case which was on a Sunday. The 19 teams were broken into 5 rooms to present during the first round with one team from each room making it to the final round.

We presented in the first round to two judges and a handful of students from other teams, and then again in the finals to seven judges and the other 18 teams (this was more nerve racking than anticipated). I was very pleased with our performance relative to other teams and in general. I truly felt that we were able to help WWLA in a way that no one previously had. This was a very gratifying experience.

Dylan: Well Nick, I appreciate your effort, your results, and the time you took to summarize it for the blog. Congrats to you Nick. Based on this, I’m going to do a follow-up story on your team overall for Net Impact, I want to hear from Nadine, Victoria and Katie), plus the other NI FEMBA team who won second-place. FEMBAs represented very well at NI this year.

Readers: More Net Impact details and photos of Nick and his team are here.

 

2 Careers, a new Baby and a relocation to LA: Cassandra and Jason Stokes ’15

Here is an inspiring story of a FEMBA-power-couple — Cassandra Stokes ’15 and her husband Jason Stokes, also ’15 — who happen to be really wonderful people. They are going through FEMBA together, have had a baby, commuted from the Bay Area and then relocated to LA. Cassandra did FLEX last year and is doing an internship this summer. They are doing it all!

Jason and Cassandra Stokes, both FEMBA 2015, and their family. They commuted from the Bay Area, did Flex and had their daughter all in their first year here.

Living in the Bay Area originally, Jason and I began exploring the possibility of business school in the the first half of 2012, looking both locally in the Bay Area and abroad.  We wanted to find a program that would meet both of our interests.  We sought a top 25 school that would provide us with credibility in the Bay Area and beyond as we considered living on the East Coast or overseas.  At the same time, we sought a diverse student body with students from a variety of fields including tech, finance, engineering, energy and nonprofit.  Finally, we wanted a program that would provide us with a top MBA degree and as robust of an experience as we would experience in a full time MBA program, from Academics to On-campus Recruiting opportunities… Anderson delivered it in spades.

Cassandra Stokes, ’15. Private Wealth Management, summer of 2014, internship

Initially drawn to the Flex program, we realized we could make both the Saturday and Flex sections work for us.  Of course, life became more interesting when we realized shortly after admission that we would be blessed with our first daughter in the second quarter of our first year!  From the first phone call I received from admissions ensuring me it would be no problem to take a quarter off and resume the program, to the special requests we have had honored as we make juggling the program, our dual careers and family a reality, Anderson has provided a place for all three of us to be successful. We commuted the first six months of FEMBA, me in the FLEX cohort and Jason in the all-day Saturday section, and then relocated to Los Angeles after our baby came.

Jason Stokes, ’15. Risk Consultant at Wells Fargo Bank

What is it like doing an MBA together?  I can’t imagine doing it any other way at this point!  The mutual support and understanding we have been able to provide each other has made the demands of the program much more manageable as we share in the experience. This past year, I also successfully participated in summer internship recruiting both on- and off-campus via the various recruiting resources Anderson has to offer and will be in a Private Wealth Management internship this summer of 2014.

Jason has been active in Anderson Student Asset Management Association (ASAM) and was thrilled to spend a day with Warren Buffett earlier this year. He’s going to be VP of FEMBA Relations for the Investment Finance Association for the upcoming year.

We have remained in separate sections throughout the program and have each enjoyed our own unique experience at Anderson. We will be taking our first class together this Spring so we will let you know how that goes of course!  All signs point to success at this point. 🙂

Raahul Srinivasan ’16: Magician, Bay Area Commuter, Double-Bruin

We admit the most amazing people to FEMBA.

Take Raahul Srinivasan, FEMBA 2016, who splits his time between Mountain View and Westwood, while he continues to amaze colleagues and classmates alike with his skills as a magician. A Double-Bruin and a member of the Magic Castle, a nearly 5,000-member Hollywood clubhouse for magicians, Raahul is one of those people I’m watching with anticipation to see what he creates next.

Raahul Srinivasan, FEMBA 2016, commutes to UCLA from San Francisco and continues to pursue his passion as a magician during graduate school.

The Daily Bruin did a profile story on Raahul last month, and also quoted his classmate, Massimo Chimienti, my favorite Italian FEMBA in the Class of 2016.

Here’s the full article. http://dailybruin.com/2014/02/12/graduate-student-balances-jobs-as-engineer-professional-magician/