Category:

MBA

Your Invitation to LinkedIn’s 17th Floor Terrace Awaits

At 3 p.m. on Fridays, employees at LinkedIn’s San Francisco headquarters step away from their keyboards and gather on the 17^th floor terrace to enjoy each other’s company. They mingle with colleagues in different departments. They savor a drink or some snacks. And they soak up the glimmer and bustle of the SoMa neighborhood below. Doesn’t sound too bad, eh?

In late October, Rady School students had the opportunity to immerse themselves in LinkedIn’s culture (and others) during the Bay Area Trek organized by Rady’s Career Management Center. Over the course of two days, Rady students (primarily MBA students, but also those in other master’s programs) visited LinkedIn, Facebook, KLA, Komodo Health, Salesforce, AirBNB, Flex and Intel, touring the state-of-the-art office spaces, asking questions of the working professionals—many of whom are UC San Diego or Rady alum—and getting a clearer picture of where their degree from Rady School of Management can take them.

We caught up with two students who attended—Ping Gu and Sitong Liu (MFin ’20) to ask them about their most memorable moments and why they encourage more Rady students to make the trip.

Which companies did you visit and why did you select them?

Gu: I visited Facebook and LinkedIn. I saw the big names and I didn’t think too much! I knew I wanted to go visit these companies.

Liu: I went to LinkedIn, Komodo and KLA. I was exciting to learn about them all. They offered a broad range of experiences. I was curious to know what kind of career advice they would give us.

What left the biggest impression on you from these visits?

Gu: At LinkedIn, all three speakers were UC San Diego alum. They were so supportive of us and said they see Rady growing very fast. Eric Darwin (Head of Corporate Development) shared his story of transitioning from investment banking to working at Salesforce and now doing mergers and acquisitions at LinkedIn. It painted a picture for us of how we can navigate our own careers. After the session, we got a tour of the building. Because it was Friday, we also got to join in on their regular happy hour on the 17^th floor. That was so cool! People from every floor of the building came up to join.

Rady students enjoy the views at LinkedIn’s San Francisco headquarters

Liu: I did not know what to expect from Komodo, because they are a small firm, but they ended up being my favorite part of the trip! They have about 200 employees. There were three presenters—two were remote who are based in New York. They shared what it was like to move from a big company to a startup, and then grow in the new role from startup to small company. The employees were all very open. We had a short tour of their office and got to spend most of the time asking questions, even common interview questions, such as how to respond to “Tell me about yourself,” or what kind of opportunities I could be looking for based on my interests. One of their presenters, Brice, who is Head of Engineering, is also involved with recruiting, so he had a lot of great insight to share. I asked the question, “What can I do if I don’t like coding but I do like analytical work?” Brice followed up after the visit with a thoughtful email response to that question and it has really helped me in my career planning.

What interactions did you have with Rady alum during the Trek?

Gu: On Thursday night, there was an alumni mixer at Atwater Tavern in San Francisco. Dean Ordóñez was there too! I got to meet a lot of Rady alum working in the Bay Area. Some alum even drove from San Jose—almost two hours with traffic—just to come to the event. I talked to Jessica from KLA about Rady life and how much she loved it. I also met Jessica’s classmate Chiara (18). She’s doing consulting for the nonprofit sector and she told me about some really exciting job opportunities. In that moment I realized how networking can work for everyone. She said they needed someone with an accounting background. I studied finance and accounting as an undergraduate. Sometimes you don’t expect too much from just talking, but that is the magic of networking!

All of the alum shared an appreciation for Rady. They love Rady. They love San Diego. And they know what to expect from Rady graduates. They all showed a willingness to help one another.

Rady students join alum Jessica Bonilla in KLA’s cleanroom.

Liu: At KLA, three employees—two who are Rady alum—made themselves available for a Q&A session. They offered us great advice about how to negotiate with a supplier. During their presentation, they showed us this video, The Monkey Business Illusion, to demonstrate that if you focus too much on one thing during negotiations, you end up ignoring some really important aspects of the transaction.

What did you gain from going on the Bay Area Trek?

Gu: The company visits allow you to not only learn what these employers do, but then you get to explore what you want to do and what direction you want to go after graduation. At LinkedIn, for example, each speaker had a different route getting to where they are today. Nobody had a typical path. Hearing about their processes and how they made it work opened my mind to what kind of career path I can pursue in the future. If you don’t go on a trip like this, you’ll never get to hear those stories. And if you weren’t attracted by the big company names alone, it’s also a great opportunity to meet Rady alumni and students from other departments.

Liu: Don’t underestimate what you can get out of visiting a small company, or a startup! [On the Trek], you really get to know the companies on a deep level. You can build personal connections with some of the presenters. This is a rare opportunity to take these tours. When you read online about what companies are like or what the culture is, the answer comes for a PR department, or maybe someone outside of the people who are doing the actual work that interests you. On the Bay Area Trek, you get to meet them. You get an authentic answer.

December 10, 2019 0 comment

Alumni MBA Rady School Startups

Cancer Survivor Clay Treska Co-Founded an App to Help Patients Get the Support They Need

written by Rady School

“As a marine, the reality is, ‘I’m going to war. I’m going to battle. I’m going to defend this country and if I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die. And then you die of a disease that you could do nothing about.”

In 2010, Clay Treska (MBA ’19) was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had served since 1998 in the U.S. Marine Corps, most of that time spent as a counter intelligence agent. Treska’s propensity to ask questions and seek answers led him to challenge his diagnosis, research his options, and ultimately save his life. His experience surviving the disease—and witnessing it take his father’s life and the life of fellow marines—led him to co-found Family Proud, an app with a mission to connect patients to healthcare resources, and to foster a network of support so that no patient feels like they’re battling illness alone.

“I was able to beat my terminal diagnosis and I wanted to understand why that was. I wanted to be able to share that with other people,” Treska says. The same year he was diagnosed, he graduated from San Diego State University with the intention of becoming a physical therapist. After volunteering and interning with UC San Diego Health, where he helped advise cancer patients and counsel mourning families after loss, he decided that he wanted to pursue a different kind of career in healthcare.

“I saw that the amount of good that you can do from an executive perspective in healthcare is just so far sweeping. It takes one meeting and one decision and you can impact tens of thousands of people and the future of healthcare. I realized that getting an MBA and learning about business was the path that I wanted to take,” he says.

Treska researched graduate business programs across California including those at Stanford, USC, University of San Diego and San Diego State University. “All of the [other] programs that I saw were missing those key components towards helping my own business,” he says. Rady’s emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation appealed to him. “I made the decision that I need to go to Rady if I want to not only excel in the healthcare environment, but also have the opportunity to start up a company.”

Treska enrolled in Rady’s FlexWeekend MBA program and continued working full-time in healthcare. He met classmate and Family Proud CEO and co-founder Jaden Risner, and the two of them developed the business plan for Family Proud through Rady’s Lab-to-Market course sequence.

“[At Rady], you’re not just getting education from the class itself and from the course material, but you’re getting education from your peers. One of the greatest aspects of the program is how you realize that you can’t possibly know everything there is to know about business. But that’s not the point. The point is to understand it enough to be able to have conversations with people, find those people that are smarter than you in these specific disciplines and have them help you work on those aspects.”

As a young company with limited resources, only about a third of the Family Proud team are currently full-time employees. The rest are volunteers who give their time because they believe in the product, says Treska. “Everybody on this team, or someone close to them, has dealt with some type of an ailment or a struggle and thought that this is a service that would have helped them,” he says. “We’re all growing through our own challenges.”

Ultimately, Treska says that the goal for Family Proud is to help make high quality healthcare accessible to anyone. “Everybody should receive the highest quality medicine, the highest quality care, regardless of who you are, regardless of what type of insurance you have, what your pedigree is, what your job is, where you came from or who you know. This is our way of being able to make sure that everybody receives the highest quality care, inside and outside of their provider.”

It’s Treska’s desire to help other patients that motivates him to keep building the business.

“What more could you possibly ask from a program?” he says. “To take something from it that you can continue to grow and prosper, something other than the degree itself. That’s the most valuable thing that Rady gave me: to take a dream and turn it into a reality.”

December 4, 2019 0 comment

Advancing Alumni MBA Rady School StartR Startup

How Collaboration at Rady Changed Amy Bernal’s Career Path

written by Rady School

Amy Bernal’s path to become Chief Experience Officer at artificial intelligence company Aira began before the company was even born. Prior to entering the Rady School in 2011, Bernal, who graduated from the Flex MBA program in 2014, had worked in project management and business development for local non-profit organizations. “I was hungry to operate in an entrepreneurial environment,” she says. “I knew that Rady was the best in terms of the ability to connect to the right people.”

It was in her first study group at Rady where Bernal met classmate Suman Kanuganti. Bernal and Kanuganti also worked together through their Lab to Market course sequence. By their final quarter, Kanuganti had the idea for Aira, which connects blind and low-vision people to remote human agents via smart phone or smart glasses, and developed his concept through Rady’s Lab to Market and StartR programs.

“I was able to see him create that company, leave where he was working before, and I eventually followed him,” says Bernal, who a senior offering program manager at Intuit before joining Aira.

Since 2016, Bernal has grown from Director of Agent Services to Chief Experience Officer at Aira. Currently, she is working to expand Aira’s network of 25,000+ partners across companies, locations, platforms and devices to increase accessibility for Aira “explorers” (users).

In the video, Bernal explains how her MBA degree from Rady broadened her skillset and opened her world to new opportunities.

November 6, 2019 0 comment

Alumni MBA StartR

Suman Kanuganti Is Making an Impact with Aira

written by Rady School

2019 has been a banner year for Aira. Launched in 2014 when Suman Kanuganti was a Rady School MBA student, Aira (“Ai” is a nod to artificial intelligence and “ra” references remote access) connects blind and low-vision people to remote human agents via smartphone app or smart glasses, “enhancing everyday efficiency, engagement, and independence” for users, which Aira calls “explorers.”

This year, Aira was recognized on Forbes’ list of 50 Most Promising Artificial Intelligence Companies, honored in Fast Company’s World Changing Idea Awards (finalists included Amazon, IBM and Microsoft), and expanded its 25,000+ partnerships to include the some of the country’s busiest airports and transit systems.

“I always tell people that if it was not for Rady School of Management, Aira probably wouldn’t exist,” Kanuganti says. Kanuganti entered Rady having earned a bachelors in electrical and electronics engineering and a masters in mechatronics, robotics and automation engineering. He says he chose Rady because “I wanted to do a program focused on how to build a business,” and build he did.

In the video, Kanuganti shares how a friend who is blind inspired him to leverage wearable technology, and how the Rady School taught him the quantitative and qualitative skills needed to create a business that changes lives.

October 30, 2019 0 comment

Alumni Careers MBA

How a Rady MBA Helped Sarah Feldman Land Roles at Tesla, Lyft and More

written by Rady School

Sarah Feldman (MBA ’15) has led technical analytics programs at several pre- and post-IPO companies including Tesla, Lyft, and venture capital firm Institutional Venture Partners. While at Rady, Feldman founded the RadyX Technology Conference, landed a summer internship developing VR technology at Sony Playstation, and says she gained the leadership and finance skills necessary to advance beyond her B.S. in Computer Science to managing multi-billion-dollar analytics programs upon earning her MBA. Here, Feldman shares how the Rady School coursework, alumni network and staff propelled her success.

How did you land your MBA internship at Sony PlayStation?

I utilized Rady’s career services to the fullest. I signed up for all Rady interview practice sessions while in school. In the Career Connections office, there were shelves of interview preparation literature such as “Cracking the PM Interview,” which I made sure to read. … I made a list of companies and types of roles where I would add the most value as an MBA intern. I narrowed down the list by attending the Rady Executive Speaker Series, San Diego Tech Meetup groups, and discussions with the brutally honest FT2015 and FT2014 cohorts. After further researching companies by reading articles on Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, and TechCrunch, I would email Rady alumni with well-thought-out questions about culture fit and their company’s products.

During the Bay Area Trek, I was able to meet with Rady alumni at Tesla, Cisco, and Google, and attend company presentations. I asked pertinent gaming industry questions at the Sony PlayStation presentation, which caught the attention of the Sony internship recruiter, who asked me to interview for three different internships where she thought I would be a good fit.

Sarah visits Google during the Bay Area Trek.

Sarah with Rady FT2015 and FW2014 students at Tesla in Palo Alto.

During the interview process, I utilized my knowledge of Computer Science courses on Matlab, OpenGL, Computer Vision, and video game creation to address the technical interview questions. With the new lessons from Rady’s leadership and finance courses, I was able to demonstrate financial knowledge of discounted cash flow statements, leadership best practices, and product management.

I landed competing internship offers at Cisco and PlayStation. I could add the most value assessing and planning product launches for the gaming industry, so I accepted the PlayStation offer.

I led development for PlayStation VR (a then-secret and stealth project to launch Virtual Reality products). I was fortunate to work cross-functionally at Sony and present to the CEO at the end of the summer.

Sarah tries a light-based VR game at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meetup.

How did you land your first tech role after receiving your Rady MBA?

During my first Rady Bay Area Trek, I met an alumnus who was working at Tesla Motors. We were both passionate about innovation in tech and we stayed in touch after my MBA internship at Sony PlayStation. When the Rady alumnus decided to change roles at Tesla, he offered to help me take over his original responsibilities. He connected with the Tesla hiring manager about the quality of Rady MBAs. After a few rounds of interviews, I was offered the role.

Elon Musk and the “ICBM Map” that Sarah managed.

At Tesla, I created global supply chain analytics platforms and data. I utilized the R and statistics skills I learned through Professor On Amir and Vincent Nijs’ classes to build global analytics models. I leveraged similar linear regression principles when creating supply chain analytics in my role at Tesla. These were later featured in Elon’s Model 3 launch event, which was pretty cool to discover in a few online articles. During his presentation, Musk coined the dashboard an “ICBM Map.”

I enjoyed my time working at Tesla, but realized I needed to have better work life balance for my life goals. Having a personal life was key for me. This led me to start a charity organization focused on athletics in my free time, and eventually leave Tesla for a different industry altogether.

How did you transition from Tesla to venture capital firm Institutional Venture Partners?

During my finance classes at Rady, I enjoyed the precision of creating financial statements, algorithms, and elaborate excel macro sheets with the purposes of evaluating the financial health of companies. Naturally, I featured this certification on my LinkedIn (as Rady Career Connections recommended for a career change). After I spent some time job hunting, an executive recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, inquiring about a role in an established venture capital firm. The firm had investments in Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, and Snapchat. They later offered me the role of Senior Manager of Analytics. I was in awe, as venture capital was a seemingly impossible industry to enter.

At IVP, I worked closely on analytics and excel valuation tools, weighing-in on pitch meetings for autonomous vehicles, and attending executive VC events with the likes of Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington and NBA player Kevin Durant. I even worked with the financials of the corporate board of directors’ books. It was everything I had imagined and more. I was able to leverage my VC Finance Class, DCF Certification, and startup valuation knowledge from the MBA program.

Why did you leave venture capital to work on autonomous vehicles?

I felt [something missing] in my daily work without the hands-on aspect of creating, strategizing, launching, and scaling tech products. Helping to advise on funding was fascinating, but I realized I enjoyed being part of a team that is ‘making a product’ more than anything.

I had a few experiences working and advising in the self-driving car sector while at Tesla and IVP, and I co-founded the Self-Driving Car sector of Women Who Code. At Tesla, I worked on ad-hoc behavior analytics reports for the Autopilot team in addition to supply chain analytics. During my time at Tesla, I also purchased a Model S with Autopilot.

The ease and pleasant nature of driving in Autopilot, a Level 2 autonomous vehicle, convinced me that this is the future of transportation. While Tesla is leading the consumer market for Level 2 autonomous vehicles, they are not alone in the quest to create an autonomous future. A colleague of mine from Tesla, and now Lyft, recommended Lyft’s Level 5 division. I saw a great fit for my skill set and made the jump to join the future of autonomous transportation.

What work did you do at Lyft?

I led data infrastructure, simulation software, and testing hardware in the loop, V&V and strategy for Lyft’s autonomous vehicle. An incredible aspect of autonomous vehicles is how many different technologies are combined to create self-driving vehicles. At a high level, a car must know where it is in the world in relation to everything else, and plan what it will do next. The underlying technology, including machine learning algorithms, compute, and simulation software, has been fascinating to work on and build. In many cases, the well-organized quantitative analysis course at Rady helped me understand some of the underlying computer vision and machine learning involved in creating a self-driving car.

How did your Rady MBA prepare you for Lyft’s IPO, and what was the day of the IPO like?

The MBA program prepared me not just to understand Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to build and read balance sheets and cash flow statements, but also to understand the landscape of the financial markets. Until recently, the IPO landscape was desolate, as a result of the 2007/2008 market collapse and the following financial levers and regulation.

In an advanced behavioral finance course at Rady, my team worked with stock market data to predict market performance for a given month. This was an extension of the common statement, which we proved accurate, that “Monday’s market will predict the market performance for the rest of the week”. Despite these stellar lessons in financial market behavior, I did not expect to be part of a company listing itself on the market in an IPO. However, my lessons at Rady prepared me well for this experience.

Sarah at an event for San Francisco’s The Commonwealth Club to discuss IPOs.

On the day of the Lyft IPO, as a Program Manager in Lyft’s Level 5 Autonomous Vehicle Division, I awoke at 4 a.m. When I drove to the office at 5 a.m., the freeways were ghostly empty. I arrived at the Palo Alto office early for the 6 a.m. NASDAQ bell tolling for Lyft’s televised IPO. The room was filled with my enthusiastic coworkers, celebrating the ringing of the bell. For those who followed the series of large tech unicorn IPO’s, the rest is history.

How do you suggest others learn more about autonomous vehicles, since many companies are in stealth mode?

Take strides to learn about open source libraries for machine learning like TensorFlow. Look into Udacity’s Degree in Self Driving Cars. And of course, stay up to date on regulation.

What’s next for you?

I recently left Lyft’s self-driving division, and have just accepted a new role at a search company. The charity organization that I founded (Silicon Valley Ice Skating Association) will be hosting its first Tech and Ice crossover event on January 11^th, 2020, “Robots on Ice.”

In the meantime, if you have any questions about Rady, please be sure to reach out to the wonderful Rady admissions team! I feel very lucky to have chosen such a great school to attend for business school, and keep in touch with classmates. The alumni network, Rady Career Connections, fellow students, and professors have been a delight to work with and guide me throughout my career.

Volunteer work brings Sarah to Washington D.C.

October 4, 2019 0 comment

Alumni Faculty Master of Finance MBA MSBA Rady School

The Rady School of Managment Celebrates Graduation 2019

written by Rady School

On June 16, 2019, the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego held commencement ceremonies for 344 students. The commencement ceremonies celebrated the graduation of the school’s Full-Time, FlexEvening and FlexWeekend MBA classes, Ph.D. students, and students from the Master of Finance and Master of Science in Business Analytics classes.

Family, friends and Rady School supporters joined the graduates for the ceremonies. The commencement keynote speakers were Julia Brown, a life science industry executive and Charles Brandes, an investment firm founder and visionary.

“Don’t be afraid to take a risk and try something new,” said Brown. “Decide what path you will take then go for it and don’t look back. Achieving a peak gives absolutely no assurance of staying there. We must earn it every day. What it took to be successful yesterday may be different than what will be required tomorrow. So we need you. We need your brain power, your talent, your energy and your leadership as you embark on your career. We wish you all the best. Whatever you decide to do, we wish you great success, great happiness and a long and gratifying career. So now let’s get out there and make things happen.”

Rady School Dean Robert S. Sullivan presided over the ceremony and emphasized the importance of remaining connected to the Rady School and its alumni after graduation.

“So to our graduates on behalf of this your Rady School community, we look forward to your successes and to your impact,” Sullivan said. “We look forward to confidently building our bridges and our support network. So please know that we will be here for you, our alumni, throughout your professional careers, not just now. If you had an issue five years or 10 years from now, this is the place to come back to keep the connections. And the network that you build as friends, they’ll go on forever.”

Students and alumni also took part in the ceremony, with Lauren Murphy (MBA ’19) and Robert Louis Beyer (MSBA ’19) delivering the student commencement addresses. Rady School Alumni Association President Bosco Lujan (MBA ’12) and Andrea Yoder-Clark (MSBA ’17) delivered the alumni addresses.

Retiring Rady School Adjunct Professor Dr. Harry Markowitz was honored with the Rady School of Management Founders Medal at the ceremony for his outstanding contributions to the school.

Markowitz is an esteemed economist, beloved professor and thoughtful philanthropist, His seminal work, “Portfolio Selection,” launched a distinguished career lauded with economics’ most prestigious accolades, including the Nobel Prize in Economics, the John von Neumann Theory Prize, and the Wharton-Jacobs Levy Prize. His lifetime of teaching ultimately brought him to the Rady School where he joined the founding faculty as an adjunct professor of finance and accounting in 2006 and continued to teach his groundbreaking theory to Rady students until his retirement this year.

In addition to his critical contributions to the establishment and quality of the Rady School, Markowitz has also dedicated himself to securing the future of the Rady School and its students through his timeless generosity. In 2017, Markowitz pledged a $4 million gift to the Rady School of Management to create fellowships for students. He placed his Nobel Medal at the UC San Diego Library in 2018.

June 18, 2019 0 comment

MBA Rady School

Jackie Lu, Yem Innovation

written by Rady School

Jackie Lu (MBA ’12) is the founder and CEO of Yem Innovation, located in Shanghai, China. Yem Innovation is a SaaS cloud platform that encourages employee innovation. Jackie shared how his Rady MBA contributed to his journey of success with Yem Innovation.

What impact has Rady had on your career progression?

After years in a multinational and local stock listed company, I found the most important resources executives ignored is their own employees. There are huge opportunities to leverage employee talents and boost corporate profits by motivating employees. During my study and life at the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego, I learned about Marketing, Operations, Human Resources, Innovation & Technology and Lab to Market. All of these courses prepared me for launching my own business: Yem Innovation, which is a human resources SaaS cloud platform. The Yem Innovation platform can be used to stimulate, manage and monetize employee ideas, or simply put, it is a cloud platform for corporate internal innovations. The results of using our platform are three fold: to improve corporate revenues, boost employee engagement and lead a bottom-up management revolution.

Has your Rady MBA enabled you to change industries or functional areas?

Before I joined the Rady MBA program, I had years of marketing and corporate communications experience. With the help from the Rady School’s Innovation & Technology and HR & Leadership courses, I made the pivot from marketing to human resources. Now with Yem, I am dealing with ABC technology leveraging AI, Big Data, and Cloud Computing to monetize employee ideas.

How did the Rady School help you create and launch your company YEM Innovation? The Rady School is not just about business; it is also about management. From here, I learned more about the problems of modern management. After some solid research, we found that there are six bottlenecks for corporate internal innovations, which are caused by a traditional management style. By tackling these problems, we built a human resources SaaS cloud platform to simulate, manage and monetize employee ideas. Using our product, employees can submit ideas on the Yem Innovation cloud platform, which is both compatible for PC and smart devices. Meanwhile we provide professional service and help to make the ideas happen, with the ultimate goal of creating innovative revenues to the client. Yem Innovation has been referred to as an internal incubator. Under the new era of uncertainty, we truly believe the power of enabling, and the power to unlock each employee’s potential. What makes us special is that those staff who submitted ideas are responsible to implement the ideas. When finishing the idea, employees will get 30% profit sharing, and the other 70% goes to the company. It is a win-win-win solution to drive new business revenues and to initiate a new management style of bottom up. So far, we have had a very successful case in a manufacturing industry. Our client used our platform to encourage employees to submit ideas and to implement their ideas. One idea saved 400,000 Chinese Yuan for the company. My Rady experience has helped every aspect of my business, especially when starting the new business. I needed to go through a business plan, and every class I attended during the school helped me a lot to make the business plan more reasonable, more practical and more convincing for the investors.

What event or realization served as a ‘turning point’ for you during your Rady School and/or professional career? Honestly, I would say there is no turning point for me, but a continuous adaption for change. Nothing changes overnight. By learning and adapting, I found my way to start a business that is unique and innovative. All of my clients and potential investors think it is new, special, and the right time to help companies to drive innovation. Currently, we are working with Fortune 500 companies and also middle to large size local companies. We are working with manufacturing, medical devices, hospitality, and consumer goods industry companies to help their product innovation, service innovation and process innovation. We even made our own turning point by creating a feature called Inno-Cube, which is a tool to stimulate employee ideas. This set us apart from competitors. With the whole platform innovation, we were awarded the Best SaaS Provider 2018 and a Top Digital 100 Award.

Why did you decide to come to the Rady School? What attracted me to the Rady School is its young, vibrant spirit and entrepreneurship. It is located in San Diego, which is indeed American’s Finest City. It gave me the chance to walk along the beautiful beaches, and I met various people to talk about Random Act of Kindness. That inspired me to create China’s First Random Act of Kindness Happiness platform: Happiness100. Happiness100 is an non-government organization (NGO), open innovation platform to collect ideas. We have only one criteria for the idea, which is to make people feel happy, and we will provide funds to make the idea happen. I feel proud to have a charity and I include this as part of Yem Innovation’s corporate social responsibility. More than 10 creative projects have been carried out, and Happiness100 itself also got honorable mentions by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and Overseas Young Chinese Forum.

What was your favorite class and why? My favorite classes are Consumer Behavior with Wendy Liu, Innovation & Technology with Kevin Zhu and Lab to Market with Del Foit. What’s funny is that because they were my favorites, I found they were also very easy to learn.

How did your view of entrepreneurship/innovation change throughout your time at the Rady School? I had a much larger view of the world because my classmates were from different backgrounds and different countries. It was a small class so we had the chance to know more about each other. My peers in the class were willing to share, to help and to inspire. In my point of view, the Rady School is a perfect school to get connected to an unexpected and surprising world. The entrepreneurship and innovation atmosphere there is like a soil that inspires people to grow new ideas and create their own business.

What was the most valuable thing you learned while at the Rady School? I remember the slogan years ago of our school is “From innovation to impact.” The most valuable thing is to impact, to do something to change the status quo. The goal of Yem Innovation is to change the status quo of traditional management styles, empower staff from the bottom up, and drive innovation. Instead of managing people, we change to empower people. Actually, scalability is another critical thing I learned in school. It is quite important for a business, especially for a mobile internet company like Yem Innovation. Because of our scalability, we got investment from an angel investor and also from SOSV last year for nearly one million Chinese Yuan. SOSV is an accelerator VC that manages $500 million USD worldwide. Another benefit of the Rady School is the ability to network and collaborate. For example, alum Jason Qi (MBA ‘16) is our COO, because we knew each other as alumni. He was also the vice president of the Rady Student Board at that time. Without the Rady School, I would not have found a brilliant alum and team member like Jason.

How have you applied your studies to your career? I applied human resource and technology, especially cloud technology, to create my new business. In some ways, I would say innovation is not that hard. Innovation is just a new arrangement of two old elements, which is how we created the one-of-its-kind Inno-Cube feature to stimulate employee ideas. I believe newcomers at the Rady School can also apply any two-field knowledge to create their own new business after they graduate.

What is the best thing about being a Rady alumni? Since the Rady School is a young school, there are advantages of being young. I feel strongly being part of the growth and I could witness its growth every single day. Thus I feel more engaged with the school and more engaged with the university alumni too, since UC San Diego is also a young university established in 1960. I always feel proud to say Go Tritons!

Yem Innovation is compatible for PC and smart devices (pictured above)

Yem Innovation was awarded the TopDigital 100 in 2018

Jackie is pitching on Chinaccelerator Demo Day

Jason is doing two live streamings for thousands of audience

April 22, 2019 0 comment

MBA Rady School Students

Immersion Trip to Cambodia

written by Rady School

Eye opening, exuberant, unique, were all words Lauren Murphy and Andrew Engram used to describe their recent Rady School immersion trip to Cambodia. Engram and Murphy, along with a team of six students from the Rady School were chosen to support the Cambodian company, Hydro-logic. Hydro-logic is working to help provide water filters to those who have little to no access to clean water.

During this immersion trip, they got a chance to put everything they have learned at the Rady School into action. The students used their business acumen to find out what challenges Hydro-logic is facing, how the company can increase revenue and how to help the company discover the best plan of action possible.

Getting There

Andrew Engram

The trip was extensive, but enjoyable. Getting to travel together as a team, made us closer friends and we enjoyed our time together. We (six of us and Professor Michael Finney), took a shuttle up to LAX, then we took a plane from Los Angeles to Taiwan, which was 14 hours long. After another plane ride and a bus ride later, we finally arrived. When we arrived, our main source of transportation was a tuk-tuk, which is a small, three wheeled, motorized vehicle. Getting there took 19 hours total, and when we arrived, we were in immediate culture shock. We realized how much of a developing country this really was, and how much of the country was living in poverty. We were also very excited to begin working on our project as a team, and to do everything we could to help improve the water shortage problem with Hydro-logic.

Why were you interested in the Cambodia Immersion Trip?

Murphy

I thought it was a great opportunity to learn more about consulting. Also, knowing how beneficial Professor Finney’s courses have been gave me that extra motivation because he is a great teacher and I wanted to learn from him more on the trip.

Engram

It was an opportunity to travel internationally, and get in the weeds with different cultures by working in an international environment. This trip was different because it wasn’t so much having an outline of things to get done, but a learning experience to put into action. It was great to understand how rural Cambodians live and find out about their access to drinking water. The client in Cambodia was trying to improve the livelihood by improving the amount of people who have access to clean water. Professor Finney was also an amazing counselor and guide for the trip. This is by far the best experience I’ve had at Rady. Every second was a learning experience and research. I was grateful to be able to use all I’ve learned and put those thoughts into action, rather than reading a textbook.

What did the work consist of?

Murphy

Our tasks included reporting to the social enterprise, Hydro-logic. We learned about their needs and built a relationship with their team. We also got to go into the field and bring interpreters to chat with rural Cambodians who were getting the water piped directly to their homes. About 40 percent of the country gets piped water, and Hydro-logic sells water filters for those who don’t have easy access to clean water. One of Hydro-logic’s goals is to bring social impact, but also increase revenue. We were able to help them do that.

Engram

Once we understood what we needed to do, we met with the Chief Financial Officer, marketing team and private water operators. We also got to meet with rural customers, how they cleaned and obtained their water, and what they did to drink it.

Did the trip meet your expectations?

Murphy

The trip exceeded my expectations, though I didn’t know what to expect. The quality of engagement and work we were able to do, as well as our exposure to a beautiful international culture and building great relationships, made the trip a huge highlight of my time at the Rady School.

Engram

Yes. Getting positive feedback from the client was wonderful. Seeing the client believe in what we were helping them understand made me feel like all my hard work at the Rady School was paying off. It was good knowing the MBA program can make an impact and have a lot of value. We both gained confidence and were grateful for the courses we have taken.

Did the trip change your perspective of doing business in Cambodia?

Murphy

Yes. This trip inspired me to want to work more in an international, complex environment. I grew a lot professionally and personally.

Engram

It was such an immersive learning experience and everything I see is now through a filter of what was learned in Cambodia. I hadn’t worked in a country with an emerging market. It was eye-opening to see people need things we take for granted on a daily basis. It was also an opportunity to make a difference in the world.

What lasting impressions did the culture reveal to you?

Murphy

We explored Siem Reap, a city in northern Cambodia. It was full of aesthetic temples including Angkor Wat. The details, art and decorations were beautiful and breathtaking. Seeing the beauty of Cambodia and its historical city structures inhabited by people, opened our minds and gave us greater context to our work. It helped with our project to take a couple days to rest and process our thoughts and expanded our creativity in greater ways.

The Food

Murphy

The food was interesting as there was food from all over Asia in one country. Some of the peculiar foods included bugs, frogs and ants. There was a lot of Thai food, as well as a twist on a kind of noodles and stir fry. Their delicacies, which included tarantulas and scorpions, were very different from America’s.

Any Last Words?

Engram

Thank you to Rady Moxie who provided the funds for the trip and, had a stipend for expenses. Thank you to the Center for Social Innovation and Impact for the grant and Professor Finney for taking the time to do this. We want to be an example of what is possible and we think the Rady School should do more of these trips.

Conclusion

Murphy

While we were in Cambodia, the team, with the help of Professor Finney, was able to help solve revenue challenges, recommend a manual washing machine, improve a system to collect rainwater and analyze how the company could best increase their current product awareness and online presence. Hyro-logic even let Professor Finney know afterwards how impressed the company was with the team and the amount of knowledge they gained from the students. The students would recommend this trip to anyone who can go. They said it was more than another school project, it was a truly life-changing process they will never forget.

April 17, 2019 0 comment

Alumni MBA Startups

Building Communities through Entrepreneurship

written by Rady School

University Avenue serves as an artery for San Diego proper, connecting more than 11 miles of hyper-local and proud neighborhoods. From the affluent urban district of Mission Hills to the sleepy family-friendly suburban La Mesa, the neighborhoods scattered along University Avenue serve a diverse array of San Diego residents. Smack dab in the middle of the thoroughfare sits City Heights, a longtime haven for refugees from all across the globe.

The community of City Heights is as bustling as it is diverse – a large number of local businesses launched and supported by refugees from Middle Eastern, Northeast African, Southeast Asian and Latin American origin. The community is proud of its global roots, celebrating the varying backgrounds and cultures.

The vitality and pride of the City Heights neighborhood inspired resident and Rady School of Management graduate David Tran (MBA ’15) to create a hub for the community to gather, while catering to the local interests and tastes. Along with his wife Sterling Tran and colleague Lonny Cheuk, City Heights Coffee House was born – a multi-cultural space for residents to gather over a cup of coffee or tea sourced from the countries that make up the neighborhood.

City Heights Coffee House sits right in the center of University Avenue surrounded by local businesses and nonprofit organizations – from Vietnamese, Somali, and Ethiopian restaurants to Lao, Mexican, and Ugandan community centers – all interspersed – and just a stone’s throw away from organizations that assist refugee resettlement and integration.

The complex ecosystem comprised of low-income households, challenges with affordable housing, gentrification, and a diverse population inspired Tran and his partners to create a social enterprise that focuses on workforce development. City Heights Coffee House offers jobs to opportunity youth in San Diego, including refugee and justice-involved youth. Opportunity youth are classified as youth between ages 16-24 who don’t have a job and aren’t in school. A crucial element of the Life Development Program is to provide on-the-job retail training, basic skills such as budgeting and managing a schedule, conflict-resolution tools, and career development courses such as resume and job-search prep.

“During my time at Rady, I took Professor Ayelet Gneezy’s class that focused on social entrepreneurship,” he said. “This class was pivotal for me because it exposed me to a different entrepreneurial path – one that isn’t traditional and focused solely on profit. One specific concept that she was teaching in the class was around root cause analysis. When we see a problem in any community – globally, nationally, or locally or regionally, anywhere or in the workplace -you have to ask yourself, ‘What’s the problem, and what’s causing that problem? And what’s the problem beneath that problem?’”

Over 41,000 youth in San Diego face barriers to employment opportunities (or lack thereof) and lack support structures to identify and perform successfully in education. The mission of City Heights Coffee House isn’t solely to provide a quality cup of coffee – it extends a hand to the community, offering jobs to underserved youth. Through job training and providing career and personal development opportunities, Tran and his team are dedicated to paving the way for their youth to succeed.

A space to serve

A longtime resident of City Heights, Tran was inspired to create a space after noticing a need in the community.

“The inspiration for City Heights Coffee House came from my experience a few years ago volunteering for a nonprofit organization called Bridge of Hope here in City Heights,” he said. “We were delivering clothes, donations, furniture and food to refugee families and I remember meeting this Afghani family that had just moved here to San Diego. When I met them, I realized that they were given all this food, but didn’t even have a fridge or a kitchen table. Moreover, they didn’t have jobs and were expected to assimilate into American society with limited help and support.”

With an idea in place, Tran decided to attend the Rady School to gain the business acumen to create and launch his dream – a community hub that helped local refugees and at-risk residents obtain marketable skills and knowledge to succeed in the workplace and community.

“My time at Rady was invaluable to the development and execution of the City Heights Coffee House,” Tran said. “The Lab to Market class in the second year of my MBA program taught me to take a concept and transform it into an actual business plan. I conducted market research and it taught me how to think — how to take a social enterprise concept that was going to solve problems for our community and transform it into an actual plan that we could work with and had action steps to it.”

Taking an idea and transforming it into a functioning business is no easy undertaking, but with the skills and tools Tran developed during his MBA, he was able to create a functioning business prototype before crossing the Commencement stage.

“Through countless hours of brainstorming, primary and secondary research and feedback from classmates and alumni, City Heights Coffee House was able to incorporate in April 2015,” he said. “Shortly after in August 2015 with a stroke of divine favor, we received our 501(c)3 status.”

A growing venture

Since 2015, City Heights Coffee House has continued to grow, moving from a Farmers Market stand to a small cart behind a thrift store to now a storefront on one on San Diego’s most popular streets. The new space has been conducive to providing a hub for the community to gather, hosting mental health discussions, cultural celebrations, art shows, open mics, and local council meetings.

“It’s so exciting to see how far we’ve come – our social venture has grown so much and we’re continuing to grow,” Tran said. “We want to continue to expand so we can provide more career opportunities for youth who want a hand-up, not a handout. We’re in the mission of second chances.”

Sitting in the shop with a cup of coffee (sourced from Ethiopia – a large population of Ethiopian residents reside in City Heights), the energy is palpable. Local residents filter in and out throughout our conversation, admiring the local art on the wall while waiting for coffee prepared by college students who live in the area. One barista, Betel Mulugheta from Eritrea, is eager to share how City Heights Coffee House has helped her in her career.

“My time at City Heights Coffee House has been extremely helpful for my career,” she said. “I work as a manager and barista, so I have experience with both making drinks and running operations behind the scenes. It’s given me the opportunity to learn more about business and I feel confident in my abilities.”

Mulugheta’s testimony brings a smile to Tran’s face – seeing his team’s goals for the business and community materialize in real time only reinforces why City Heights Coffee House was created in the first place.

“I’m so thankful for my time at Rady, because without Rady this wouldn’t have been possible,” he said. “I hope other MBA students realize that social ventures and enterprises can be profitable while changing the world for the better.”

March 7, 2019 0 comment

Alumni Careers MBA Startups

Expert Mentors Guide Rady Students to Entrepreneurial Success

written by Rady School

The adage “Rome wasn’t built in a day” rings true in the startup ecosystem. Ask any entrepreneur about their journey from idea to flourishing company, and they’re sure to offer up a list of individuals who helped them along the way.

The Rady School of Management startup community has been developing a network of successful entrepreneurs for more than 15 years, launching more than 180 student and alumni-led companies in its short lifespan. Although the network has always been happy to help those looking to get their companies up and running, the School recently created a new mentorship program designed to connect budding entrepreneurs with seasoned industry experts to foster creativity and provide the students with a strong support system throughout the early stages of their startups.

Developing Rady Innovators and Entrepreneurs (DRIvE) is a donor driven initiative born out of a gift from UC San Diego alumnus Mark Waxman (B.A. Economics ’70). The program began last year by collecting a community of both Rady and out-of-network professionals looking to share their skills and knowledge of various industries. Then, students participating in the StartR Rady accelerator were hand selected to join the mentorship program. Once the student participants and mentors were chosen, pairs were formed based on mutual interests and needs identified by the students.

“The mentors were extremely involved from the very beginning – they wanted to get as much information they could about the students and their companies to see how they could help,” said Karen Jensen, Entrepreneur Advocate at the Rady School. “Their investment in our students has been crucial to the continued development of several startups launched here at Rady.”

Once the matches are made, mentors and mentees stay in touch by connecting in person or on the phone to stay involved with the entrepreneurs throughout their journey. The DRIvE program also hosts quarterly Monday morning events that facilitate in-person interactions between mentors and mentees through workshops, pitch presentations and networking.

“We start by working with students to identify their needs and interests, then we match them with mentors who have experience in those fields,” Jensen said. “Each student can have up to three mentors with expertise in fields, such as finance, marketing and product development so the students have a strong network.”

The benefits of mentorship

The expectation for the program is for mentors to stay engaged for at least six months, but several mentor/mentee pairs have continued to stay involved after the official program is complete.

Mridu Sinha, co-founder of MelioLabs, participated in the initial cohort of the DRIvE program to take her microbial identification startup to the next level. MelioLabs created a microbial identification system that screens for newborns at risk for infection, making it easier to identify newborns who are at risk of sepsis – a condition that can be fatal for infants.

Sinha connected with June Chocheles, President of the Chocheles Consulting Group and Athena Foundation Board Member, who helped her learn the ropes of fundraising, marketing, branding and business scaling.

Due to the value of the program, she remains in contact with her mentor to this day. She credits the rapid success of her company to her mentor who has continued to support her throughout the development of her company.

“June has a lot of experience starting and running companies, so it has been a wonderful experience working with her,” she said. “

While the StartR Inclusion accelerator – formerly known as mystartupXX –helped initially launch MelioLabs, the DRIvE mentorship program has helped sustain and grow the startup.

“If you’re looking to take your company to the next level, the DRIvE program is a great way to help,” she said. “The mentors are extremely helpful and supportive and have the tools and experience you may not have yet. The strong Rady network connects you to a number of professionals who are willing and excited to help you.”

The next generation of innovators

The success of DRIvE has created a vast network of interested mentors eager to share their knowledge and skills with budding Rady entrepreneurs. The mentor network continues to grow to include more Rady alumni who know the potential Rady startup leaders have to offer.

“Entrepreneurship and innovation are essential aspects of the Rady School experience, and we’re doing whatever we can to expose our students to as many opportunities as possible,” Jensen said. “We’re so thrilled that students and mentors have been so actively engaged in the first DRIvE cohort, so we’re excited to continue to grow the program.”

February 27, 2019 0 comment

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