Drive Time

Share Success: Incredible. Get your tissues because there SO much love in Barbara’s story: following her heart with Google from Brazil to LA, going through FEMBA (secretly!?!) with her husband Victor, falling in love with LA, taking the leap of faith to leave the juggernaut of Google to fly into the world of LA28 after an Anderson class that changed her life. Barbara’s story is 100% a telling of w...

Think Fearlessly: Wow. Seriously. I’ve listened to this episode three times, and my IQ goes up 5 points with each listen. Jonathan and Becky cover SO much of an amazing journey: a lifetime healthcare arc from loving his father to serving over 1.5M employees at Amazon; a history lesson in US Healthcare; favorite faculty (Kramer, Shaddy, Fox), and more. In a school full of unicorns, Jonathan and Bec...

Drive Change: Five years later. Leading after Anderson. Building the classroom experience of Anderson for the next 20 years. And running Tenacity Artistic Productions and fulfilling his childhood dreams of Storytelling to make the world work for everyone. From earning a JD, to earning an MBA, to being an entrepreneur on two continents, Perry is an inspiration in your network. Featuring: Perry Pous...

Anika Sharin (’20) has commuted from the Bay Area to L.A. for three years because she chose UCLA Anderson over UC Berkeley. She keeps her base up north because she was hired by fellow alumnus Paul Badawi (’00), who founded the Silicon Valley-based company Sight Sciences. “The way we talk about sharing success at Anderson,” says Sharin, “he is really doing that.” Now, as she prepares to graduate, S...

Even the assistant dean and CFO of the UCLA School of Law had to overcome his fear of public speaking. Double Bruin and alumni board member Steve Yu is an active mentor and tireless advocate of higher education, yet he says doing the dishes is crucial to staying productive. The winner of the UCLA alumni network’s 2017 Volunteer of the Year Award proves he’s just like us.   Hosted by Dylan Stafford...

Get to know Brent Pressentin and, 30 minutes later, you might be managing your money better than you were before. Despite the peripatetic nature of his early career, the self-described Cheese Head says, “Planning is a consistent theme in my life,” something he learned to value at 23 working for E&J Gallo. Post-college, he test-drove the carbon-fiber Trek bike Lance Armstrong rode in his fifth Tour...

Ashley Merrill (’15) launched her sleepwear business, Lunya, one month after starting business school in Anderson’s FEMBA Flex program — and a few weeks after finding out she was pregnant. She initially couldn’t picture how she’d manage all of it at once. “Confidence was one of the gifts of business school,” she says. “It wasn’t like I went to accounting class and that was the gift, it was feeling...

Located in San Diego and a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist in rowing, Susan now works for a medical research company that is working on a coronavirus vaccine.   Hosted by Dylan Stafford, Assistant Dean of Admissions of the Fully-Employed MBA (FEMBA) program, the Drive Time Podcast features interviews with current students, faculty, and administrators from the UCLA Anderson as they discuss leadershi...

Why does a U.S. Marine Corps veteran earn an MBA from UCLA Anderson? And what can his military training teach the rest of us about dealing with COVID-19? Joel Searls reflects on these topics as well as his decision to reinvent himself as an associate producer of a feature-length Hollywood movie, Running with the Devil (2019), starring Nicholas Cage and Laurence Fishburne.   Featuring: Joel Searls...

Growing up in China, Sophie Gao dreamed of an American experience. Her father made sacrifices to pursue becoming a medical doctor, and Sophie followed his work-hard example to get herself to the U.S. for college and career. She completed her Anderson MBA while living and working in Arizona and, distance notwithstanding, served as a FEMBA Council member and tutor. She was an Equity, Diversity and I...

Recent graduate of the class of 2020 Rob Busalacchi, Investment Banking Associate at Barclays talks about his experience going through the Fully-Employed MBA (FEMBA) program as a former Marine.   00:00 ​ Intro 03:15 ​ Family Background 09:05 ​ Undergrad Experience at Marquette University 11:00 ​ Becoming a Marine/Military Experience 19:35 ​ Deciding on an MBA & Grad School 26:00 ​ Choosing Anderso...

A decade after earning her Anderson MBA, double Bruin Kate Greenberg (B.A. ’04, ’10) has led a remarkable career. When she was an undergraduate, the communications job she does now for the Washington Nationals’ charitable arm didn’t exist. She’s gone from managing PR for high-profile companies like Disney to shaping the communication strategies of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, and she...

Recent graduate of the class of 2020 Dominique Kagele, Global Product Strategy— Heme/Onc, Integrated Insights Leader talks about her experience going through the Fully-Employed MBA (FEMBA) program as a working mother.   00:00 ​ – Intro 05:35 ​ – Family and Growing Up in Reno, Nevada 08:15 ​ – Undergraduate Experience at University of Nevada-Reno 10:00 ​ – The Road to a Ph. D. 12:23 ​ – Post-Doc Ex...

Brittany Blackamore (FEMBA '16) discusses her successful career transition to Boston Consulting Group and her nonprofit organization, Suitcase of Joy.   0:00 ​ – Intro 2:50 ​ – Founding a non-profit, Suitcase of Joy (inspired by going on 7 Global Immersions!) 7:00 ​ – Two themes she lives her life by – “I don’t have to know how to do something before I can begin how to do it” and “do something now...

Recent graduate of the class of 2020 Tarang Lal, M&A Advisory— PwC, talks about his experience going through the Fully-Employed MBA (FEMBA)program and how he made the career transition from Petroleum engineering to an M&A Consultant at PwC.   00:00 ​ Intro 03:50 ​ Personal Background 07:50 ​ Typical Day at PwC 09:30 ​ Career Enhancer v. Career Switcher 11:20 ​ On-Campus Recruiting & PwC Internship...

Recent graduate of the class of 2020 Tina Pham, Category Manager at Amazon Go Grocery talks about her experience going through the Fully-Employed MBA (FEMBA) program as a career enhancer in the retail industry before becoming a career switcher and getting a new job at Amazon.   0:00 ​ – Intro 2:35 ​ – Family & Early Years – Born and Raised in Seattle 4:19 ​ – Undergrad Life at the University of Wa...

Barry Ripley switched careers from engineering to finance, and as an Anderson FEMBA secured a prestigious internship in investment banking (twice!). While he was a student, he also led a FEMBA Anderson Career Team with stellar results, helped to bring microfinance to farmers in the Andes and learned to love speaking up in class. Featuring: Barry Ripley (M.S. ’11, ’16), Technology M&A, Qatalyst Par...

Professor Corinne Bendersky teaches FEMBAs in the Leadership Foundations and Organizational Behaviors courses and is faculty chair of the Human Resources Roundtable (HARRT). She studies female firefighters, who typically make up no more than 4% of their field, and what they can teach us about diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. In this podcast, Bendersky discusses developing one’s ow...

Born in New Delhi, India, Akshay Grover moved 8,000 miles to attend UCLA Anderson. He earned his engineering degree in Dubai, and an internship with Siemens got him to California. Here he worked on a sustainability project for San Bernardino County that resulted in more than $400,000 in energy and cost savings for America’s largest county (covering some 20,000 square miles). This project caught th...

John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow Sana Rahim says her native Laramie, Wyoming, “was a totally random place to grow up” for a Muslim of Pakistani heritage. She knew from an early age she wanted to achieve a global perspective, whatever her career path — which has included working in Turkey with victims of domestic violence, diversity and inclusion consulting, and five years with logistics and su...

What’s it like to come to the United States with no undergraduate degree, earn a Ph. D. in chemistry from Caltech, publish more than 45 peer-reviewed articles, pivot to brewing beer and then embark on your MBA? With credit for contributing to prize-winning research by two Nobel laureates, alumnus Diego Benitez founded Progress Brewing in South El Monte, California, in 2012. The former academic, no...

Alumnus Brian Thomas recalls the journey of Clutter, a full-service moving, storage and logistics company that started as an idea he had as a FEMBA student. Brian went from driving the truck and making pick-ups himself to expanding Clutter into a nationwide business with $300 million in funding. He pays tribute to Anderson faculty, his fellow students and the FEMBA program for helping to drive his...