The MBA Student Voice

Food Festival Continues to Grow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you on the other side of the break!

-- Sreesha

Tweets in Class, and the 1,000th Person

Here is a unique twist: I have a class this quarter that encourages us students to use our mobile phones during class.

The class is called Brand Management and is taught by Professor Sanjay Sood and co-taught by Jim Stengel, the former Global Marketing Officer of Proctor & Gamble. It is a really exciting class because Mr. Stengel is a world-famous and highly accomplished marketing executive, Prof. Sood is renowed as being one of the best professors at UCLA Anderson for marketing and entertainment, and together they have assembled a fascinating array of guest speakers in the field.

Further, a whopping 20% of our grade will be based on "social media"; we are tasked with tweeting our reactions to the presentations by the guest speakers.  We've only had one class with this component thus far, but I thought it was a unique take.  It was interesting to see what my fellow students found poignant from the presentation, and to give and hear our reactions. 

In the first class, we mostly quoted what we felt were the highlights.  I tried to highlight some parallels to other facets of industry, and asked a question or two.  I think as we get more comfortable with the concept, we'll have a broader dialogue, where perhaps the twitter feed will be almost like a separate conversation to the presentation -- ideally an interesting debate.  Definitely a unique way to change the classroom experience!

* * * * * * * *

I need to bring up something that happened last quarter, that I should have addressed after it happened.  Better late than never, I suppose.

I wanted to shout a hearty THANK YOU to a fellow Bruin.  I don't know her name or which school she is in (she's not from Anderson, or at least, I didn't recognize her).  But I really appreciated her sentiment and would encourage all of us to follow her example.

See, what happened was, I was driving out of Parking Structure 7, which has a ramp that leads to a three-way stop T-junction with the main road.  It was relatively late -- think it was about 10:30 PM or so -- on a Monday night. 

I got to the stop sign at the same time as another car reached the stop sign to my right. I realized then that I had forgotten to plug in my iPod into my car stereo.  So I put the handbrake on (my American readers should know that I drive a manual transmission), put my emergency lights on, and quickly fished out my cord.

999 cars out of 1,000 would have driven off from that stop sign and gone on their way.  But she was that 1,000th car.  Rather than go straight and away from the garage, she turned left, pulled up next to me, rolled down her window, and asked, "Are you ok?  Is your car ok?"  I told her that I was just adjusting my iPod, she said, "great", U-turned, then carried on her way.

It occurred to me well after the fact that she's a small woman driving by herself late at night on a dark campus, yet took the time to make sure I was ok before going on her way. I was touched.  Those of us to live in the major metros in the US are so used to mis-trusting people that we forget to help each other -- or in this case, just make sure we are all ok.

To the wonderfully noble-minded Bruin from that night, thank you very much.  You made my day.

-- Sreesha

London Calling...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Sreesha

New Year, Endless Possibilities

Hope springs eternal -- first day of school and first week of NHL training camp! 

* Great to be back on campus, and now in classes that I really am excited about since they are all electives.  But the pressure is on to have a job -- and at least a shell of a career path -- lined up by end of the school year.

* Maket participants will always push the market rules to the limits for their own gain.  Thus, it is unreasonable to expect the NHL -- or any governing body in any industry -- to create rules that account for every possible circumvention attempt.  Rules must constantly evolve. 

* We've created a cohesive message and mission for the International Business Association, and are already seeing the fruits of that through increased buzz on campus and exciting new possibilities. Exciting!

* For the Sports Business Association, it was clear that we took a tremendous step forward last year, so this year we will be building on the same momentum with more events, more opportunities, and more brand recognition. Equally exciting!

* Do you know who was most excited about Dimitar Berbatov''s incredible third goal against Liverpool this past weekend?  Howard Webb.  Takes the spotlight off the fact that his two controversial refereeing decisions led to Liverpool goals. 

* Two darkhorse White House candidates for 2012 that are getting more attention lately: Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley.  Imagine having to decide between two Indian-American candidates in the GOP primary -- and then have one of them square off against African-American Barack Obama?  Never thought I would see that in my lifetime.  Sadly, despite its centuries-old heritage ties with India, I can't forsee anything remotely close in the UK.

* Controversial thought of the day: in our strive for a gender-equal world, we can all agree that women should be allowed to compete and thrive for equally successful and lucrative careers in any industry; why do we then assume that men are not as competent as women when raising children?  Why can't that job be 50/50 as well? I get the sense that most women assume that they will be "in charge" when raising kids -- in today's era, could it be that this is just an unfair sense of entitlement, or a gross underestimation of the father's parenting capabilities?

The possibilities are endless!

-- Sreesha