Aside from Commencement, another exciting event that took place on campus in June was the annual Forte Women's MBA Conference. This was the second time UCLA Anderson hosted the conference (the first time was in 2012). Among the hundreds of attendees from around the country was incoming UCLA Anderson Forte Fellow Sarah Wolf who shared some insights on the event below. Read on to learn more! Tell us about some of the sessions you attended – what did you learn from them? In addition to the full attendance sessions, I was excited to attend the “Own the Dance, Negotiating with Confidence” and “Lemons into Lemonade: Own Your Failures” sessions. Although I have long known there is a discrepancy between female and male negotiations, it was shocking to see the staggering differences between the sexes. And though I have been asked to “talk about a time you’ve failed” a number of times, it was incredibly helpful to think about the simple structure of a story in framing that interview question response. What was your most significant takeaway from the Conference? Women in business don’t need to act like “one of the boys” in order to be successful. Rather we need to own our differing perspectives and values as we re-frame the discussion about what attributes are necessary for success. What are you looking forward to most about business school? I am looking forward to spending two years surrounded by fascinating and intelligent individuals who will push me to grow as a... Continue reading

This post comes courtesy of the UCLA Anderson blog and was written by Asmi Shah, Class of 2014. The 2014 Entrepreneur Association Conference: The Evolving Entrepreneur is the best thing I’ve done at Anderson. Since October, I had been working with Kristina Bidovec (’14) and Bo Pulito (’14) to organize the event. This year, we created a partnership between the Entrepreneur Association (EA) and High Tech Business Association (HTBA) to expand the reach of the conference. Countless hours were spent brainstorming themes, new initiatives and of course – keynotes. We knew that keynotes pull a crowd and sell tickets, so there was a lot of pressure to get this right. Judging by the response last Friday, we indeed got it right: Sean Rad, Founder & CEO of Tinder, along with Anderson’s own Emily Taylor; Kelly Perdew, CEO of TargetClose; and Mohanjit Jolly, Partner & Managing Director at DFJ Venture. Kristina, Bo and I also worked with a group of 25 students to organize panels and content, obtain sponsors, market the event and run operations. It was a lot of work, but I was inspired by the passion and energy our team brought. We were the managers — thinking strategically about the event, the Anderson brand name, and how to maximize community engagement. We motivated the team when the end goal was months and months away. The three of us rallied together when ticket sales seemed slow, so we reached out to additional media sponsors, emailed personal contacts, and physically canvased... Continue reading