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.
How Collaboration at Rady Changed Amy Bernal’s Career Path was last modified: November 6th, 2019 by Camille Cannon
If you’ve ever seen Shark
Tank, you’ve gotten a glimpse of the nerve, expertise and determination it
takes to pitch to potential investors. You must absolutely know what you’re
doing, where you’re headed and what you can offer.
Through Rady School’s StartR Accelerator, a 100%
philanthropy-supported, six-month program, teams comprised of at least one Rady
or UC San Diego student or alumnus are provided with mentoring, workshops,
co-working space, and connections to funding sources. At the end of the
program, StartR Demo Day is the teams’ Shark
Tank moment.
On October 2nd, six startups from the Fall 2019 StartR cohort: FlexAir, Athlete Initiative, DeepFlow, SurfUp, Project: Pangolin and FreeGen Technologies showcased their companies in five-minute presentations in front of San Diego’s entrepreneurial community, including several successful StartR alums. If you weren’t one of the 160+ attendees at this Demo Day, here’s what you missed:
How Far We’ve Come: StartR accelerator was founded in 2013 by none other than Rady School students, and since then, it’s served a whole lot of them. Dr. Lada Rasochova, executive director of Rady’s California Institute for Innovation and Development (CIID), and Kim Davis King, co-director, shared that 152 startup teams have participated in StartR and raised a remarkable $85.9 million under the guidance of CIID and more than 50 mentors. Not only that, but twelve StartR companies have been accepted into business incubators, five teams went on to found a second startup, two received investment from the Rady Venture Fund and two exited to larger companies.
Accomplished Alums: If those figures weren’t enough to demonstrate StartR’s impact, at Demo Day, we got to hear it first-hand from StartR alumni.
Demo Day emcee Ashley Van Zeeland, Ph.D (Rady MBA ’12, co-founder and former CEO of Cypher Genomics, which she sold to Human Longevity) is now the VP of Product Development Business Operations at Illumina. “I can say with 100% confidence that I would not be where I am today without the support, the backing and the constant encouragement from the Rady School and the StartR program,” she said.
Ana Morena, StartR Inclusion alumna and CEO and founder of Navega Therapeutics, shared that the business has raised nearly $1 million from investors. Martyn Gross (Rady MBA ’15), StartR Rady alum, founder of Clarify Medical and President of Stratify Genomics said, “I can’t express my gratitude enough.” His thanks were echoed by Julio de Unamuno IV, (Rady MBA ’14) StartR Rady alum and CEO of lab software startup LabFellows, which has garnered 2,300 customers, more than $3 million in funding and a recent write-up in Xconomy. “This started here with Rady,” he said. “You guys were here before anyone else was.”
Six Talented Teams:
Former Navy pilot and FlexAir CEO Paul Wynns (Rady MBA ’20) presented “the flight school training tomorrow’s flight leaders.”
Athlete Initiative co-founders Robbie Beyer (Rady MSBA ’20) and Amy Kame pitched their sexual violence prevention program for collegiate athletic departments. “We ask that everyone join us in creating a safer campus community today,” they said.
Takuya Onda and Yusaku Nakamura (both Rady MBA ’20) of Deep Flow offered insight into their cloud-based, large-scale simulation software.
Chris Hissom and Natalie Moazzez (both Rady MBA ’19) shared their “Bird scooter of surfboards,” SurfUp, an automated surf rental station and smartphone app. Unlike Bird scooters, the team said, because SurfUp houses the rental boards at a station, you won’t find them scattered “everywhere.”
Ayush Sapra and Ana Dasgupta presented Project: Pangolin, an initiative to recycle plastic waste in Myanmar to produce an alternative construction material. To demonstrate the material’s strength, Sapra stood on a recycled footstool during the presentation.
Casey Fitzpatrick of FreeGen Technologies told us about the SeaSkimmer, their autonomous, machine marine drone that tracks and collects trash in ports and harbors. In other words, he said, it’s the “Roomba of the ocean.”
And the Awards Go to:
After the company pitches, two StartR teams were recognized with a $250 prize
each. Deep Flow was selected for the Excellence Award by the judges, and SurfUp
was voted Audience Choice. Additionally, Derrick Oien, CEO and founder of
ScoreStream was recognized with the Guru Award for his mentorship, and Karen
Anderson, partner at Cooley LLP was recognized with the Spark Award in
appreciation of her sponsorship.
The next round of StartR began this month, with new teams
under the wings of CIID and community mentors. Be on the lookout for the next
Demo Day in Spring 2020!
Cloud-Based Simulations, a Surfboard Rental Station and More Highlights from Demo Day Fall 2019 was last modified: October 21st, 2019 by Camille Cannon
The threads of entrepreneurship and innovation run through
the fabric of the Rady School of Management as evidenced by the plethora of
companies started each year by the school’s talented students and alumni. Many
of these early stage startups receive guidance and support from one of the Rady
School’s StartR Accelerator
programs. Once these fledgling companies mature, they begin looking for
investments from venture capitalists to spur growth. One avenue where they can
find investors is a unique Rady School option: the Rady Venture Fund.
The Rady Venture Fund is assisted by the Rady School MBA students participating in the Venture Capital Management course. The class is an elective that enables students to get the first-hand experience of making investment decisions. Companies pitch their business ideas and the students evaluate the idea and with the help of an investment committee, determine whether or not to fund the company. The Venture Fund itself is funded by donations from people who believe the class experience will enhance the education of MBA students.
Lada Rasochova
Lada Rasochova, Executive Director of the California Institute for Innovation and Development at the Rady School and the faculty who teaches the Venture Capital Management class, explained that the fund has invested in seven companies, five of which were started by either Rady School or UC San Diego alumni.
“We are willing to take the risk to fund our alumni because
we believe in them,” Rasochova said. “We believe that they are the right people
with the skills needed to succeed because they gained those skills here.”
Rasochova explained that funding university startups is the
Rady Venture Fund’s preference. This focus is in line with the broader goals
for the fund.
“In addition to education, the impact of the donations is
that they support startup companies,” Rasochova said. “The Rady Venture Fund
donors support whole life cycle. The companies started by our alumni get the
funding and hopefully they become big companies that create a lot of jobs, have
a significant economic impact, and hire even more UC San Diego alumni. And,
because the Rady Venture Fund is supported through donations, any money gained
from investments in startups goes back to the fund to reinvest in future
startups, so the value is multiplied.”
The Rady Venture Fund: Funding Alumni Innovation was last modified: September 26th, 2019 by Melinda Battenberg
This September, the first ever cohort of Master of
Professional Accountancy (MPAc) students will make history as they begin
classes on campus at Rady School of Management at the University of California
San Diego.
It’s an exciting time to be around the buzzing Rady campus,
not just for the students but for the faculty and staff too. James Deiotte,
Executive Director of Rady’s MPAc program, is particularly excited to kick off
the 2019-2020 academic year with a refreshed take on the traditional masters of
accountancy program.
James Deiotte, Executive Director, Master of Professional Accountancy
“Our students will be taught
by professionals in the field they’re entering. They will gain great insights
as to what goes on and what’s expected to become successful in the profession,”
says Deiotte. “Being taught by research
faculty and industry professionals, including retired accounting firm partners,
will accelerate the career development of our students.”
What makes the Rady MPAc different is that we’re leveraging
on the strengths of being a young business school that is entrepreneurial at
its core. Rady is a school that has a collaborative and innovative culture and
the MPAc program is no exception. The collaborative approach is reflected in
the program’s crossover with other disciplines offered at the school, including
business, analytics, and finance.
“We have approached embedding
data and business analytics into most of our classes to accelerate the
understanding of these changes and putting more context around it,” says
Deiotte. “For example, we want our
students to understand the legal nuances and the accounting implications of what
is a digital asset and how you might want to account for the acquisition of
those assets. We are especially
interested in the accounting and reporting related to the new and restrictive
regimes arising around the world like the EU’s General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) or California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).”
Our program embraces students that want
to change and make a meaningful impact in their careers and the profession. With
the changes taking place in technology and data, students that have majored in
data science, economics or international studies are finding that the accounting
profession is interested in them, provided they can understand and use the
language of business – accounting.
Getting into the profession is Job #1! “We’ve
built a curriculum that accomplishes the most important tasks with respect to
the professional development of our students,” says Deiotte. “We want to make sure that students are ready
for certifications within the profession, including the CPA and CMA exams,
which are both recognized globally.”
Growing in the profession and future proofing the student’s
investment in their career is enhanced by Rady electives focused on leadership,
communication and decision making courses and experiences from Capstones. “We have heard from firms, both large and
small, that soft skills development is even more important today because of the
rapid technology enabled changes taking place and the use of BOTS, AI and ML
platforms,” says Deiotte.
Launched in 2014, the Master of Finance (MFin) program at
Rady School of Management is a relatively new program. But despite its
adolescence, the program and its curriculum has quickly become highly praised
within the industry.
Just last year it was ranked by the Financial Times as one of the top MFin programs in the world; a
huge accomplishment after a mere four years since the program’s conception. It
placed 14th in the U.S. and is expected to rise higher in the future.
The highly-regarded ranking isn’t all that the MFin degree
has to offer. The Rady School MFin program is a STEM-designated, CFA
Institute-affiliated professional degree that delivers rigorous, hands-on
training to prepare graduates to immediately contribute in environments where
quantitative and analytical skills are at a premium.
Students learn leading-edge methods for analyzing big data
for financial decision-making and risk management. The program’s emphasis on
quantitative models and methods ensures that graduates are equipped to develop
innovative solutions to the complex problems facing the financial industry.
“The Master of Finance
program at Rady is designed for the current needs of the finance industry. It
incorporates class work that reflects what’s going on in the industry today and
includes a heavy component of data science, which is presently very important
for financial firms,” says Michael Melvin, the Executive Director of the MFin
program at Rady.
Michael Melvin, Executive Director, Master of Finance, Rady School of Management
As Melvin notes; “It’s
a quant program, so students learn quantitative skills, including financial
econometrics that they can apply throughout their coursework including the final
capstone research project.”
The MFin capstone is a project-based course that allows
students to work with a prestigious firm within the finance industry. Students work
together in teams of four and complete research that demonstrates the application
of skills developed throughout the MFin program.
“Our students work
with a mix of local and global firms. From San Diego to London to Hong Kong,
capstone project stakeholders present students with a particular idea to
research, which may cover a range of financial topics.”
These topics can include anything from portfolio construction,
cryptocurrencies and bitcoin, trading issues, payments, asset management, and risk
management, among many others. What’s more is that students can learn from collaborating
with respected industry professionals.
Examples of capstone companies that students worked with
this year include some of the top financial firms in the world, such as Goldman
Sachs and BlackRock. They also worked with companies that have finance groups
within them, like ViaSat, and a local La Jolla firm, Alphacore.
“Alphacore is a great example of a firm where we had students interning
with them that were so successful in their research that Alphacore executives
were interested in continuing the relationship and building upon what was
started,” recalls Melvin.
Melvin says that “students
might do a project with one firm but then that experience will lead them to
opportunities with other firms as well.” Opportunities for students to
network and showcase their skills often lead to their ultimate goal;
employment.
“I think the MFin
degree is a ticket into the industry. I used to be a Managing Director at
BlackRock and we’re teaching students at Rady the skills that I wanted to hire
for my teams at BlackRock, which were quantitative investing teams.”
The capstone increases employability because the students
gain the skills and the abilities that firms want to hire. Not only that, but
students can differentiate themselves from other job applicants because they’re
able to highlight bespoke research on their resume.
“When capstone teams
are doing very well, which they often do, firms will request resumes from the
teams so that they can interview students, which leads to internships and
permanent jobs.”
For anyone looking to enhance their career within the
finance industry, the MFin program at Rady is a great place to start.
In today’s business environment,
being skilled in analytics is becoming more and more of an advantage across
many industries and corporations. Playing it safe with a basic understanding of
business practices might be satisfactory, but successful businesses use data
analytics techniques and models to make better decisions and gain a competitive
edge.
At Rady School of Management, we
equip our students enrolled in the Master of Science in Business Analytics
(MSBA) program with the skills needed to thrive in these types of data-rich
business environments.
Our MSBA program offers rigorous,
hands-on training that prepares students how to identify business
opportunities, generate business insights and create business solutions, all
through data and analytics. It’s unique in the sense that it delivers a
curriculum at the convergence of data science and business.
As Raymond Pettit, Executive
Director of Rady’s MSBA program, notes, “Rady
is one of the few business schools that has a strong and collaborative relationship
with our data science colleagues on campus. Many other schools that offer MSBA
degrees are often stand-alone, however Rady offers cross-discipline
opportunities through our close relationship with the Halıcıoğlu Data Science
Institute and the Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego and our world-class
faculty in all these areas.”
As part of the MSBA curriculum,
students must participate in a capstone project, which consists of solving a well-defined
business problem for a real life company. Each student pursues this experience
as part of a team and must complete both written and oral exams to pass the
course, as well as a complete report for the sponsor company.
With more companies seeking
skilled professionals who can work effectively in teams to answer key
operational and strategic business questions using data and analytics, the
capstone project is crucial to position students for future career
success.
“The capstone project isn’t just mandatory for students, it’s beneficial
for them because it gives students the opportunity to practice what they’ve
learned throughout the course and apply it to a real-world setting with an
industry leading company,” says Pettit.
Every year, the capstone
stakeholders include Rady School industry partners and big name companies such
as Petco, Hewlett Packard, Becton Dickinson, Cisco, DIRECTavenue, Mirum, and
Mazda among many others. These companies present students with an opportunity
to obtain real industry experience that aids them in their job search and
beyond.
It’s also not just beneficial for
students, but it’s also valuable for the participating companies. Pettit added,
“Many companies that our students work
with see the capstone as a way to create a talent pipeline, so they can keep these
students on as interns or they can hire students for permanent jobs afterwards.”
Some participating companies have
been involved with the MSBA capstone project for several years, meaning they
can build off projects from the previous years. Not only that, but the capstone
is growing tremendously with more than 25 companies submitting proposals to
take part just this year alone.
For this academic year, Pettit
and the rest of the MSBA faculty were overall very pleased with the capstone
results noting that; “The quality of
students emerged in the amazing work and reports the teams presented to the
sponsoring firms. This group of students will be making sizable contributions
as their careers continue to grow and evolve.”
It’s an exciting time to enroll
in an MSBA program at Rady as there are many advancements on the horizon.
“We’re going to expand the program and we can envision this expansion
benefitting a larger number of companies based on the success we’ve seen so far,”
says Pettit. “There is scope for the
current capstone to develop into a joint-capstone in partnership with other
disciplines on campus including data science undergraduates and our Master of
Professional Accountancy program. To do this on the business side and work
together would be huge and a new type of collaboration that nobody else is
doing.”
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.
The Rady School of Managment Celebrates Graduation 2019 was last modified: June 18th, 2019 by Melinda Battenberg
In China’s fast-paced technologically advanced market, autonomous self-driven cars, paperless transactions and digital grocery shopping are considered the norm. Two Rady School Full-Time MBA students, Adam Stallings and Eric Nouwen, experienced this first hand as part of the school’s China immersion trip. While on the trip, they learned China is a world of difference from what they had expected.
The students shared how much the trip opened their minds to new, cutting-edge philosophies they can now use in business ventures here in America. The trip left a significant impression on Nouwen. “You will have one of the best international experiences of your life,” he said.
Watch this video to learn more about the invigorating, educational and eye-opening experience these two students had in a country that is building faster infrastructure and technology than anywhere else in the world.
Rady School China Immersion Trip was last modified: June 11th, 2019 by Rady School
“Boehringer Ingelheim knows what it takes to be innovative and
entrepreneurial. From the small factory in 1885 to today’s multi-billion-dollar
global pharmaceutical organization, we know how important it is to nurture and
develop young science and technology businesses. Our track record of bringing
breakthrough medicines to patients starts with new ideas and new science.
Collaborations with external partners play an essential role in helping us
deliver an innovation-led portfolio…” From “Partnering Day with Boehringer Ingelheim,” Biocom,
September 21, 2017.
Three young entrepreneurs from the University of California San Diego,
knew the value of the Boehringer Ingelheim prize when they pitched their
business ideas to investors, faculty and students. The prize includes a “golden
ticket,” or one years ‘worth of workspace at bio-labs, an infrastructure office
space for startups, located on the UC San Diego campus. It also includes
mentorship and exposure to investors to help the companies get a kick-start to
successful innovation and connections.
The Rady School is honored to have alumni who were the last three prize-winners
of the three previous years. We wanted to find out how the prize affected them,
and where they are today:
Cory
Bentley
The 2017 winner of the first-ever Boehringer Ingelheim Innovation prize was RIFT Biotherapeutics, a biotech company founded by Rady alum, Cory Bentley (MBA ’10).
Tell
me about your company?
I founded RIFT because I saw there was a critical area of cancer biology
that hadn’t been addressed: Inflammation. I believe if the inflammation in
cancer is targeted, cancer treatments can be improved.
Why
did you start RIFT?
I didn’t see anyone addressing cancer in this way at the time. The immune
system often sees cancer as a wound that should be healed, rather than
something it should get rid of. The immune system will actually make cancer
stronger by supporting it with blood supply and growth factors, components of
inflammation. People become resistant to anti-cancer treatments because their
immune system is protecting the tumor from therapy with this inflammatory
environment. It is an essential mechanism of resistance to cancer treatment.
RIFT discovered an antibody-based drug that may help the immune system switch
from being pro-tumoral to anti-tumoral.
How
has the Rady School of Management helped you achieve your goals?
Rady gave me the confidence to know some of the significant components of
starting a business and moving a large project forward. Some of these
components included financing, intellectual property, accounting and people
management. I wouldn’t have known how to start or run a business if I hadn’t
gone to the Rady School.
Eric Venn-Watson
The 2018 winner of the Boehringer Ingelheim Innovation prize was Epitracker, a biotech company founded by Rady alum, Eric Watson (MBA ’10).
Tell
me about your company?
Epitracker is a San Diego-based life sciences company that discovers and
optimizes small molecules to treat some of the world’s most devastating
diseases. To date, Epitracker has analyzed millions of metabolomic, genomic and
clinical data points from archived, longitudinal, serum samples collected over
50 years. Through this process, we have discovered novel small molecules that
target longevity, neurodegenerative diseases, fibrotic diseases and pulmonary
diseases.
Why
did you start Epitracker?
Part of my background includes being a physician in the Navy. I have a
passion for science, as well as the entrepreneurial and business side of the
equation. I wanted to start a company and it has included both of those
passions.
How
has the Rady School of Management helped you achieve your goals?
Every business school has its area of expertise. The Rady School’s, is
innovation, especially in the tech and biotech fields. I learned everything
from the operational aspects of being an entrepreneur to handling finances as a
business owner, and I was even able to grow my network within the San Diego
area substantially. San Diego is an incredible city that has many key opinion
leaders who are willing to help you and mentor you. The Rady School has amazing
professors that will provide real-time feedback and help you develop your
ideas. Knowing what you need to get started, and how to successfully develop
and grow your technology, is essential.
The Boehringer Innovation prize provided lab space for a year. It helped
us focus on growing the company more than anything. It also gave us credibility
in terms of pitching our business to investors and experts in the field, as
well as submitting for grant funding. Today, we have many compounds going
through the FDA process, over 30 patents, and have raised just under three million
dollars in private capital and an equal amount in grant funding. The Boehringer
prize has helped us expand more rapidly by having access to a state of the art
lab and a broad support network. It is an environment that is very conducive to
advancing our research and our company.
The combination of a Rady MBA and Boehringer Innovation prize has
enabled us to accomplish much in a relatively short period. Thank you, Rady and
BI!
If you’d like to read more about Epitracker, click here:
http://www.epitracker.com/
Simon
Bailey
The 2019 winner of the Boehringer Ingelheim Innovation prize was Darkwood Pharma, a biotech company founded by Rady alum, Simon Bailey (MBA ’11).
Tell
me about your company?
Darkwood Pharma is a drug discovery company, focusing on developing novel
therapies for fibrosis, with a particular emphasis on liver fibrosis due to
advanced non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). NASH is a progressive liver
disease that affects millions of Americans, causing fibrosis and cirrhosis, and
it will be the leading cause of liver transplantation by 2020. Darkwood
Pharma’s mission is to discover and develop liver-targeted compounds which will
halt and reverse fibrosis and prevent cirrhosis in this disease, for which
there is currently no approved treatment, despite intense interest from the
pharma/biotech world. By developing compounds that selectively act in the
liver, our approach will both increase the effectiveness of the drug as well as
minimize side effects which will benefit these severely ill patients.
We are hoping to have our first drug candidate molecule identified in
2020.
Why
did you start Darkwood Pharma?
I’ve spent my entire career working in drug discovery, leading diabetes
and oncology medicinal chemistry departments at a large pharmaceutical company
then as head of research for a mid-sized biotech. I’ve been very fortunate to
have led teams that have discovered many drug candidates, including two that
been approved for use in lung cancer. So, if I ever started a company, it was
going to be a drug discovery company.
The specific reason for founding Darkwood Pharma is that in NASH there is
a compelling combination of unmet medical need and scientific opportunity that
attracted me. I recognized that a small company that can be singularly focused
on developing liver-targeted drugs, that can be flexible and nimble in a way
that larger companies can’t, would be differentiated from the competition.
Plus, I thought it would be fun.
How
has the Rady School of Management helped you achieve your goals?
In a way, the Rady School led to me applying for the Boehringer-Ingelheim
Innovation Prize. I went to the BI prize event in 2018 to support another Rady
School company, long before I had founded Darkwood Pharma, and so it was on my
radar to apply for it this year. The judging process involves a pretty rigorous
evaluation by BI scientists as well as their “Research Beyond Borders” external
innovation group, so it was pleasing to hear the positive feedback and
validation of the science and the company concept after such a thorough
process. We are continuing to explore a possible collaboration with BI since
NASH is a focus area for them.
More generally, going to the Rady School allowed me to connect with and
learn much more about the local San Diego biotech/entrepreneur ecosystem, than
I ever had the opportunity to do during the 20 years I spent working for a
large pharma company. This included venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and
small biotech companies. I gained an appreciation of how that world works.
Also, San Diego is an active environment for innovation, and we need people
creating companies here, not in Boston or the Bay Area. The Rady School is a
great way to make connections and get involved to continue to build the San
Diego innovation community.
Find out more about Darkwood Pharma here: www.Darkwoodpharma.com
“I’ve Got a Golden Ticket…” in Biotech! was last modified: July 2nd, 2019 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
Jackie Lu, Yem Innovation was last modified: April 29th, 2019 by Melinda Battenberg
