Heather Caruso joined UCLA Anderson in 2018 as assistant dean for equity, diversity and inclusion. A scholar and researcher of organizational behavior, she teaches in the Management and Organizations and Behavioral Decision Making areas.

Caruso’s passion for facilitating collaborative success runs deep in her life and work. “My formal interests in organizational and social psychology developed when I was an undergraduate at Stanford doing cross-cultural negotiation research with Jared Curhan and Lee Ross,” she says. These interests deepened during her years as an engineer and executive in a multinational Silicon Valley startup. “I was fascinated with the real-world experiences stemming from differences in cultural identity. Interpersonal problems could derail even the most talented individual performers, and effective collaboration skills could not only prevent such problems, but raise individual contributions to new heights.”

Layering rigorous academic training on top of practical experience, Caruso grounds her interests in the areas of: effective collaboration (especially for cross-functional and multicultural teams); skilled improvisation in leadership; management of identity, power and influence; and strategies for optimal choice, judgment and decision making. She focused on these topics in over a decade of teaching, research administration and scholarship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and has moved to UCLA Anderson to enrich and expand her work.

“Propelled by our outstanding research in these areas, we are connecting to pioneers and pathbreakers, building bridges between research and practice to best accelerate innovation in the digital age.”

Caruso stays connected to the everyday priorities and challenges of the workplace by consulting for private- and public-sector organization leaders across the globe, as well as by teaching classes in leadership, team dynamics and power and influence. In addition, Caruso partnered with Chicago’s Second City to co-found the Second Science Project, which offers skill-building leadership workshops at the intersection of robust behavioral research and professional improvisational practice.

Caruso is a strong proponent of lifelong learning for management excellence, and encourages students to make the most of their professors’ knowledge, not only while they are pursuing their degrees, but also throughout their careers. “As a preeminent public university, UCLA has a a distinctive opportunity to advance equity, diversity and inclusion,” she says. “It is an honor to help UCLA Anderson seize that opportunity by creating the kind of challenging and rewarding educational climate that can benefit leaders from every walk of life.”

Jim is an adjunct faculty member at UCLA and an entrepreneur in the healthcare and communications fields. He proposed and led a 2019 UCLA Health Innovation Challenge Award project focused on the clinical value of patient stories and is now developing technology to bring unprecedented healthcare price transparency to the public. He is an advisor to a pioneering company in the development of AI to access the world's growing body of medical evidence and a producer of innovative ed-tech content for the Surgical Sciences Lab at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. Jim has served on UCLA's medical Institutional Review Board overseeing patient safety in clinical trials and led a team in the Amazon Alexa Diabetes Challenge. His career has included work as a television producer and executive roles in sales, joint ventures, financing, and acquisitions. He is a graduate of UCLA and UC Berkeley School of Law. 

A graduate of UCLA (B.A., '82) and Harvard Business School, Terry Kramer has extensive technology and leadership expertise in the domestic and international telecommunications industry. Since beginning his career at Harris Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton, Kramer has held executive roles in AirTouch, PacTel and Vodafone globally. At Vodafone, he was the group strategy officer, group HR officer and chief of staff. He was also regional president of Vodafone Americas, with responsibilities for oversight of Vodafone's 45% interest in Verizon Wireless and Vodafone's venture capital activities. He also served on the Executive Committee at Vodafone Group Plc.

During his tenure at Vodafone, he and his family moved no fewer than eight times to locations that included London, The Hague, Dallas, Phoenix and San Francisco. The benefit: "Living in so many different places, working in so many fundamentally different environments gave me a new appreciation of contextual leadership - how leaders must be adept at assessing the different context of each leadership role to ensure a dynamic nature to their style, achieving success for that unique environment."

While serving as an entrepreneur in residence at the Harvard Business School between 2011 and 2013, Kramer was appointed by President Obama to serve as Ambassador, Head of U.S. Delegation for the World Conference on International Telecommunications in June 2012. This delegation formulated and communicated the U.S. policy regarding the criticality of a free and open internet as well as an inclusive, multistakeholder governance, the need to proactively address cybersecurity threats and the need for liberalized, open markets that encourage global accelerated broadband access. The conference was covered by CNBC, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

No stranger to the field of academia (his parents were teachers), Kramer jumped at the opportunity to work at UCLA Anderson, as it provided "a chance to engage with the next generation of leaders." An adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson since 2013, Kramer is a full-time faculty member, teaching the foundational technology management course, covering the impact of disruptive innovation on products, services, markets and competition, and another course on the evolution and innovation in the mobile communications industry and promising areas of innovation. He is also a faculty advisor in the Global Access Program and Strategic Management Research program. Kramer serves on the boards of TeleSign and TangoCard and on the advisory boards of RapidSOS and Textpert, as well as the Harvard Business School California Research Center, UCLA Economics Department board of visitors and Larkin Street Youth Services.

Originally from San Carlos, California, Kramer and his wife, Suzan, currently reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, from which he commutes to Los Angeles regularly. Together they have developed a family foundation focused on education, health and human services, which "reflects our views about the impact of youth and education on our collective future."