Center for Global Management

Robert Busalacchi (’20)

Barclays Capital

ROBERT BUSALACCHI is a graduate of the fully employed MBA Class of 2020. During the summer following his second year, he interned with Barclays Capital in its investment banking division and accepted an offer to return full time as an associate after graduation. Prior to joining the FEMBA program, Busalacchi served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. He spent seven years on active duty and completed deployments to Japan, South Korea and the Asia-Pacific region as part of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. Busalacchi received his B.A. in international affairs from Marquette University in Milwaukee. During both his undergraduate years and time in the Marine Corps, he closely studied international political systems and world affairs.

Busalacchi was drawn to UCLA Anderson because of the school’s focus on engaging with the global community through the on- and off-campus programming offered by the Center for Global Management. While pursuing his MBA, he traveled to 12 countries spanning four continents. He completed two global immersion courses and visited Austria and the Czech Republic to compare the two countries and examine the long-lasting effects of authoritarian central planning on economic development. He later traveled to Finland and Sweden to study entrepreneurship and corporate renewal. He also traveled to New Zealand for his Global Access Program field study project with FABRUM SOLUTIONS, an engineering company based in Christchurch that develops cryocooler technology. In the spring quarter, Busalacchi was scheduled to visit Israel for a third global immersion course to explore the agglomeration of entrepreneurial activity and technological innovation. The course was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On campus, Busalacchi enrolled in global management courses focused on global macroeconomics and non-market risks, understanding politics and the global context for doing business, as well as a course offered by the Luskin School of Public Affairs titled “Political Economic Development.” He served in leadership positions for the Investment Finance Association and Anderson Veterans Association. Busalacchi was a mentee in the CGM mentor program and was selected as a 2019 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow. While at UCLA Anderson, he attended many of the CGM’s global conferences, policy forums and speaker series. For Busalacchi, these global experiences were augmented by the friendships, professional network and deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges of doing business globally that he acquired through the programming provided by the CGM.

Ania Puczylowska (’20)

Brand Socialite

ANIA PUCZYLOWSKA is a graduate of the executive MBA Class of 2020. She is founder and CEO of Brand Socialite, a technology platform for the experiential marketing sector. Prior to founding her own company, Puczylowska worked for Strategic Group, where she represented the LVMH Moet Hennessy brands for more than a decade and managed annual revenue of over $3 million while achieving annual business goals. Her decision to attend Anderson was strongly influenced by the opportunity to participate in the CGM’s global immersion courses and expand her global network. Born and raised in Poland, and with a distinct passion for global travel, during her two years at Anderson, Puczylowska participated in three global immersion courses that traveled to Japan, Scandinavia and India. She first traveled to Tokyo to understand the effects of Japanese systems on the way business is conducted in Japan. In September 2019, she visited Helsinki and Stockholm to study entrepreneurship and corporate renewal and engage with many successful entrepreneurs and business leaders as well as startup companies. She later visited Mumbai and Hyderabad to explore both the risks and opportunities offered by the Indian market for foreign investors and domestic entrepreneurs alike. For her EMBA international business residency, Puczylowska traveled to Johannesburg and Cape Town to learn about creating a socially responsible business and social enterprise within the context of South Africa and how the country’s history, politics and economic conditions have led to the growth of social entrepreneurship and a vibrant social sector.

On campus, Puczylowska enrolled in the “Global Trends” course, where she explored recent global trends affecting business and their effects on management practices and business opportunities around the world. She was a regular attendee at the many global conferences, policy forums, luncheons and speaker events that the CGM offered. Her two-year MBA journey was life-changing and greatly enriched by her global experiences both on and off campus. These experiences expanded her understanding and appreciation of different cultures and ways of doing business, made her more aware of the importance of diversity and the triple bottom line in decision making and provided her with the necessary skills and knowledge to be a more effective and compassionate global leader.

Lizzeth Rosales (’20)

FUSE Corps

LIZZETH ROSALES is a graduate of the full-time MBA Class of 2020 and a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar. Prior to joining UCLA Anderson, Rosales worked in the nonprofit sector, in the areas of education, housing, urban planning and environmental justice. She served as chief operations officer for an organization that provides after-school and family support as well as gang prevention services to low-income communities in Los Angeles, and she led climate justice policy work as assistant director of equitable development, directing state funds to disadvantaged communities in the city. Prior to this, Rosales spent four years with the Natural Resources Defense Council, assisting with various air quality initiatives in Southern California, and before that, she served as a paralegal for a nonprofit that provides legal resources to low-income tenants facing eviction. She graduated cum laude from Harvard University with an A.B. in government. Rosales in fluent in Spanish.

To expand her global perspective, during her two years, Rosales enrolled in a variety of global management courses, including those focused on global macroeconomics, global trends, international business strategy and global marketing management. For her AMR project, Rosales worked with Conservation International’s impact investing team on a new-market-entry strategy for non-timber forest products to advance conservation efforts in the Amazonia region. She also served on the Anderson Student Council (ASA) as vice president of ethics and professionalism and was instrumental in organizing the 2020 Anderson Ethics Case Competition, which featured a global perspective. She also held leadership positions for Net Impact, the Women’s Business Connection and the Anderson Latino Management Association.

During the summer of her first year, Rosales interned at the Jakarta headquarters of Duithape, a FinTech social enterprise that provides mobile payments to unbanked populations. She focused on social impact analysis and development of a social impact measurement framework in alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals, with a particular focus on gender and economic impact. During the winter of her final year, Rosales worked for the XPRIZE Foundation on an academic internship. She contributed to the design of a framework to operationalize impact analysis and developed potential impact measurements for its grant-making teams. She also served as a mentor in Anderson’s Riordan Scholars program and as a circle leader for Lean In Los Angeles, a global community that empowers and supports women. After graduation, Rosales seeks to use her business school skills and knowledge, combined with her extensive social justice experience and passion for making an impact, to help empower communities both locally and globally and to advance equity.

Andrew Dale (’19)

PwC

ANDREW DALE is a graduate of the full-time MBA Class of 2019. Prior to joining UCLA Anderson, he spent three years in Lusaka, Zambia, as managing director and co-founder of LSD Communications, the exclusive African distributor of a portfolio of Chinese smartphone brands. Prior to this, Dale worked in Shanghai as a senior data analytics manager with Walmart. He graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in economics and Chinese, and later attended National Taiwan University to complete a yearlong Chinese language program. Dale is fluent in Mandarin.

Throughout his two years at UCLA Anderson, Dale was keen to continue his interest in international affairs and global management. On campus, he enrolled in the Global Macroeconomy and Global Supply Chain courses. He also traveled in connection with two global immersion courses. In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, he learned about risks and rewards in emerging markets with lessons from Brazil; and in Chile, he explored business opportunities in the country under a new market-friendly government. For his Applied Management Research project, Dale helped Conservation International develop a strategic growth plan for its Wildlife Insights initiative, which uses machine learning technology to help scientists and the public gather insights from motion-activated cameras in biodiversity hot spots around the world.

During the summer of his first year, Dale interned as a financial analyst and assistant to the CFO at UroGen Pharma, a biotech company that develops breakthrough cancer therapies. He analyzed company non-cash compensation usage and projected future demand to design and implement an equity compensation plan for the company’s expansion. During his second year, he continued working at UroGen to monitor key metrics for the CFO. He also served as a mentor in UCLA Anderson’s Riordan Scholars Program and as vice president of impact investing for Anderson’s student-led impact investing fund. Dale took full advantage and attended numerous global speaker events, lunches and policy forums that the Center for Global Management offered. Post-graduation, he will be working as a senior associate within the deals group in the Los Angeles office of PwC and will continue his interest in global affairs through membership in the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

Joyce Liu (’19)

U.S. Department of Justice

JOYCE LIU is a graduate of the executive MBA Class of 2019. She leads a team of U.S. Department of Justice strategic analysts who are responsible for assessing the evolution of international and transnational threats to the United States. Liu is also responsible for developing collaborative partnerships across the public and private sectors.

During her two years at UCLA Anderson, Liu participated in two global immersions courses. She first traveled to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to explore the key drivers of entrepreneurial development and understand how the “Startup Nation” became a global leader in technological innovation. She later visited Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to evaluate the potential for growth in a developing country and compare and contrast the startup scenes in both cities. For her EMBA international residency, Liu traveled to Argentina to understand how business leaders incorporate creative risk mitigation policies into business practices to allow them to weather political and economic volatility.

On campus, Liu enrolled in the Global Trends course, where she explored recent global trends affecting management practices and business opportunities around the world. She also enrolled in the Non-Market Risks: Understanding Politics and the Global Context for Doing Business course, where she acquired an understanding of how the global political environment and megatrends such as climate change and technology affect business, and she developed an analytical framework to evaluate such risks. The knowledge and experiences she gained through networking and engagement opportunities were the most memorable of Liu’s UCLA Anderson education and the most impactful on her professional development. One experience that stands out was her participation in a roundtable discussion with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. The global management education also provided Liu the necessary vision and skills to better apply her background in government and international affairs to the business environment.

David Sequeira (’19)

Chevron

DAVID SEQUEIRA is a graduate of the fully employed MBA Class of 2019. He has worked as an engineer with Chevron for over 10 years, since graduating from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with a B.S. in civil engineering and a concentration in geotechnical engineering. He has held various engineering positions with Chevron and currently serves as a reliability engineer for its refinery in El Segundo, where he leads organizational and process change.

The Center for Global Management (CGM) was formative for Sequeira during his three years at UCLA Anderson and provided him with an intense, diverse and comprehensive global management experience that better prepared him to do business in a global context. He participated in four global immersion courses, which traveled to South Korea, India, South Africa and Chile. In Seoul, he learned about the business opportunities available and the risks of competing with government-supported monopolies. In New Delhi and Mumbai, he explored the business environment for foreign investors and domestic entrepreneurs. In South Africa, he witnessed the lasting impact of apartheid and studied what the country’s innovators and social entrepreneurs are doing two decades after the system was abolished. In Chile, he learned how economic policy affects business opportunities. Sequeira counts this memorable international travel among his greatest learning experiences at UCLA Anderson.

Sequeira also traveled to Chile and Colombia for his Global Access Program field study project with IONIX, a FinTech company with a mobile payment application based in Santiago that was looking to expand to another market in Latin America. During the six-month project, he traveled to Santiago, Bogotá, Cali and Cartagena to conduct extensive primary research to understand the feasibility of the company’s market entry to Colombia. During spring break of his final year, Sequeira also joined the annual student trek to Israel, organized by Anderson’s Jewish Business Student Association. One of the most important aspects of all his experiences has been the network and friendships that he was able to develop with students across programs.

On campus, Sequeira enrolled in the Global Macroeconomy, Global Supply Chain and Innovation and Evolution in the Global Mobile Industry courses. He also served as a teaching assistant for the CGM’s new global immersion course, A Technology-Driven Transformation of Society, Enterprises and Consumers, which focuses on transformation in China and Hong Kong more broadly in areas such as FinTech, high-tech smart manufacturing and internet services. He attended many of the CGM’s global conferences, discussions and speaker series on topics such as India’s currency reform and the U.S.–China conflict and the case of Huawei. Sequeira was one of two recipients of the CGM’s 2019 Outstanding Student in Global Management and Leadership Award.

For the last 10 years, Sequeira has been an active member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and served a two-year term on the national board of directors. On campus, he was the FEMBA director of the Latino Management Student Association. Sequeira was recently promoted and post-graduation will transition to an international rotational assignment for Chevron based in Escravos, Nigeria, where he will be responsible for leading a group of engineers. He hopes to leverage his global management specialization and international travel experiences to assist him in making the cultural transition and assimilating to his new global role.