David A. Schkade, the Jerome Katzin Endowed Chair and a professor of economics and strategic management at the Rady School, was selected as the 2017 Battle Buddy Staff and Faculty Award. He was presented with the award on Monday, June 5th at the Military-Affiliated Graduation Celebration held at UC San Diego.
The Battle Buddy Staff and Faculty Award goes to one UC San Diego Staff or Faculty member who has dedicated time, effort, and passion to military affiliated students, and has demonstrated influential, outstanding, and long-lasting support for this unique population.
Chris Hamidzadeh (MBA ’17) nominated Schkade for the award given through the Student Veterans Resource Center at UC San Diego.
“On behalf of the veterans enrolled at the Rady School of Management, we want to acknowledge Dr. David Schkade for his unwavering commitment to serving the military community,” Hamidzadeh said at the event. For many, being part of his course was the highlight of our MBA program and as such, we are honored to recognize him with the 2017 Battle Buddy Staff and Faculty award.”
Hamidzadeh and fellow Rady veteran students acknowledged Schkade’s unwavering support and commitment to helping veteran students succeed.
“Professor Schkade, your dedication to helping veterans improve their lives has not gone unnoticed – thank you,” Hamidzadeh said.
About David Schkade
David Schkade specializes in the psychology of judgment and decision making, measuring subjective experience, and improving decision making.
The primary focus of Schkade’s research is on the psychology of judgment and decision making, and how decision making can be improved. His scholarly work includes over 60 published papers and two books, including his most recent, “Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary.”
He has studied a wide variety of issues, including the relationship between money and happiness, the design of information displays for decision making, how jurors make punitive damage decisions, the effect of ideology on the decisions of federal appellate judges, environmental resource valuation, valuation of health effects for cost-benefit analysis and why people choose to become organ donors.
Rady Professor Earns Veteran Focused Award was last modified: September 5th, 2017 by Rady School
When Ryan Ruehl left the Marine Corps after five years of service as an artillery officer with two deployments, he knew he wanted to work in the medical device industry—something he’d been passionate about since high school. He already had a degree in biomedical engineering and his time in the Marines had given him the leadership skills to be successful. But several of his early startups failed. “It’s really, really hard to start a business with no support or like-minded people around,” he said.
Ruehl wanted to pursue an MBA in order to learn more about marketing, finance, strategy and entrepreneurship and enrolled at UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management. In what can only be called kismet, on his first day of school he struck up a friendship with fellow MBA student Dr. Jon Wilensky. That friendship led to the creation of Braykion, a tech startup that seeks to reduce hospital-acquired infections in patients through wearable devices. A year into it, they have secured an investor and expect to launch a pilot program at the Jacobs Medical Center over the summer.
While Ruehl was able to find a pathway to success, his story emphasizes a common struggle among veteran entrepreneurs: they have ideas but no practical knowledge of the business world and no cohort to help them on their journey. This is compounded by acquiring skills in the military that are highly desirable, but difficult to translate into corporate America.
Not all veterans are able to enroll in business school as Ruehl did. In order to better serve the men and women who have served our country, UC San Diego is expanding its already robust line-up of entrepreneur programs to include two specifically geared toward veterans: a Certificate in Entrepreneurship, operated through the Office of Research Affairs; and Veteran Ventures, an accelerator program offered by Rady School of Management. In a truly non-traditional move, veterans are not required to have any affiliation with UC San Diego and tuition is free.
“The genesis for these programs was the belief that our veterans have unique knowledge and experience, and our goal is to help them turn their ideas into reality that benefits society,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “This is our responsibility as a public institution and it’s a way to give back to our veterans who have so bravely protected our citizens and nation.”
Research Affairs’ Office of Innovation and Commercialization is responsible for organizing and developing the certificate program, recruiting instructors, and finding venues for the classes. Vice Chancellor for Research Sandra Brown said she felt it was important that the university not just toe the line when it comes to veteran programming as much as redraw the line.
“At UC San Diego, we wanted to do more—to go deeper, be of better service. We are not just a veteran-friendly campus. We are a veteran-empowering campus,” she said.
The next Certificate in Entrepreneurship course will launch June 7 with the City of Carlsbad. The six-week course is designed to help veterans acquire the necessary business acumen to give their startups the best chance of success. Budding entrepreneurs will learn to turn their inspirations into viable businesses; create dynamic frameworks to test and evolve ideas; and create a scalable, sustainable model. The course will also guide them in telling their story to potential investors, gathering customer feedback and other relevant market data, financing their startups, and recruiting and motivating stellar employees. For more information on the Certificate in Entrepreneurship course , email innovation@ucsd.edu.
Veteran Ventures is geared toward veteran entrepreneurs who are ready to move from business concept to viable operation, and focuses on mentoring and coaching. The Rady School launched their first pilot program at the end of April and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Vish Krishnan, a professor of innovation, technology and operations at Rady, is the current faculty advisor for Veteran Ventures. In his Lab to Market Workshop, he observed veterans struggle as they transitioned from the military to civilian world and thought they could benefit from extra resources. “The goal of the program is to help veterans receive inspiration, insight and seed funding to build and scale these ventures,” he said.
Michael Hayden, a veteran Marine with more than 20 years of service, is himself an entrepreneur and also acts as the program facilitator for Veteran Ventures. He praised the school’s efforts, saying, “To have a school as prestigious as UC San Diego create these programs geared specifically toward vets is incredible, especially since the community of veterans in San Diego is so large—around 250,000. I can’t thank UC San Diego, Rady School of Management and namely Vish Krishnan enough for what they’re doing.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, San Diego County is home to the country’s third largest veteran population. Speaking at a recent reception to celebrate UC San Diego’s new programs, Congressman Scott Peters, who serves California’s 52nd Congressional District, remarked that “We have a moral obligation to keep our promises to our veterans, who deserve more than our gratitude for the sacrifices they made in service to our country. I want to recognize Chancellor Kholsa and his team at UC San Diego for extending educational opportunities to even more of our veterans. Like so many San Diego initiatives, this program can serve as a model for other universities and communities throughout the country on how to honor our nation’s heroes.”
As a veteran entrepreneur himself, Congressman Darrell Issa spoke from experience: “As someone who is a veteran and who left the army more mature than I went in, there was no better place to use those skills than as an entrepreneur. But I made a lot of mistakes. I didn’t have any way to fill in the blanks of what I didn’t know. Now, those resources exist at places like UC San Diego.” Issa represents California’s 49th Congressional District, which includes Camp Pendleton, the largest Marine Corps training facility in the United States.
UC San Diego’s enhanced focus on military entrepreneurs deepens the already strong bond that exists between the campus and the veteran population. In order to better answer the needs of veteran undergraduates, UC San Diego established the Student Veteran Resource Center in 2013. The center seeks to ensure that military-affiliated students successfully make the transition to campus life and offers resources such as peer-to-peer support, mentoring and social networking.
The campus also has a long-standing relationship with VA San Diego Health Care System. Many of UC San Diego’s researchers and physicians have joint appointments with the VA, which directly impacts the clinical treatment of our veteran community. Congresswoman Susan Davis, who represents California’s 53rd Congressional District, stated, “UC San Diego and the VA bring together their shared values to support our veterans in building their entrepreneurial skill set, which will translate into new businesses, jobs, and economic development for the region.”
Caravanning across Africa through treacherous territories within Sudan to serve civilians in one of the world’s most war-torn and impoverished nations is all in a day’s work for the members of No Greater Commission (NGC).
Started by Kurt Parson, a Navy Vet and current CEO of Platform Systems, Inc., No Greater Commission was devised as a way for members of the military to apply their skills to solve problems around the world. How do you run supplies to missionaries who are cut off behind enemy lines? How can you build schools and roads in a warzone? These specialized skills members of the military are equipped with can help solve complex issues in dangerous locations.
The noble mission caught the eye of Rady School of Management alum Justin Wells (MBA ’16). As an active duty service member and instructor pilot for the Navy, he felt compelled to get involved.
“There’s an outpost in Bor, South Sudan that is the center of stability for hundreds of miles,” he said. “NGC actually went on a trip there last year, but they were attacked and had to flee for their lives and take all the supplies with them.”
Wells, along with three Rady School students – Dan Lindsey, Rich Lee and Manupriya Sharma – helped No Greater Commission devise a social media marketing experiment to raise awareness about the mission and increase donations. The challenge is to raise $130,000 for the organization to travel to the war-torn country to attempt to deliver supplies.
Using skills and strategies obtained through Rady School curricula, and under the direction of Ken Wilbur, associate professor of marketing, the team devised a plan to help No Greater Commission increase its online presence and audience reach.
“We started off by gathering information about the organization, South Sudan and the mission they are going to help,” Wells said. “We put it all together and came up with four different versions of marketing copy. Then, we put it out to a few hundred people in the form of a survey and asked them ‘Would you be willing to donate to this cause?’”
After extensive research, the team learned which advertisements performed better and continued to test those versions on Facebook and Instagram.
“We put some pictures up with the four different versions of marketing copy,” Wells said. “Each version was approximately 150 words in length. We put them out to about 10,000 people using a broad segmentation strategy and saw which version drove traffic, and specifically who was clicking. We ran another round with refined segmentation.”
To bolster No Greater Commission’s online presence, the team also reached out to influential Twitter users to garner support and spread of the word about the upcoming mission.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to provide them with a report and recommendations,” Wells said. “We each learned a bunch from working with Professor Wilbur. We hope the experiment translates into a deeper understanding of what aspects of NGC’s organization help drive web traffic, and ultimately donations.”
Future plans
The four Rady School team members crossed the Commencement stage in June. In addition to working with No Greater Commission, the team of four is also involved with starting a business called AirCourse – an in-airport food service company that provides travelers with a way to access food options. The idea for AirCourse was came to fruition in the Lab to Market Sequence and is now housed in the Rady School’s StartR Accelerator.
No Greater Commission was last modified: September 5th, 2017 by Hallie Jacobs
Student veterans discussed career transitions and job opportunities at a networking event hosted by the Rady School in conjunction with Rady Veterans Club, UC San Diego Career Services Center, UC San Diego Student Veterans Organization and Northrup Grumman last week.
“The Veterans Connection event was excellent,” said Rady School student Mark Golden (MBA ’17). “It’s exactly the sort of networking event that allows transitioning military members to make real, valuable connections with some of the leading federal entities and government contracting companies. I feel much better about my post-graduate school prospects now.”
Both professionals and recruiters from companies seeking veterans, as well as UC San Diego alumni who have successfully transitioned from a career in the military to a corporation, were in attendance at the event. Current students were able to network and build connections to help them learn about available opportunities and to discuss their own specific career prospects.
“I really appreciate all the alumni who took the time to share their military to corporate transition experiences,” said Ken Reynolds (MBA ’17), the current president of the Rady Veterans Association. “It is very helpful to see how experience in the military can be successfully translated to the business world.”
Aleena Karamally is a student writer for the Rady School of Management and a sophomore at UC San Diego. She is a Human Development major and a member of the UC San Diego Equestrian Team.
Rady student veterans explore career opportunities at Veteran Connections event was last modified: September 5th, 2017 by Aleena Karamally
by Michelle Franklin
It’s a daring mission, to say the least.
Student veterans discussed career transitions and job opportunities at a networking event hosted by the Rady School in conjunction with Rady Veterans Club, UC San Diego Career Services Center, UC San Diego Student Veterans Organization and Northrup Grumman last week.
