SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Jerry Nickelsburg joined the UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and The Anderson Forecast in 2006. Since 2017 he has been the Director of The Anderson Forecast. He teaches economics in the MBA program with a focus on Asian economies. As the Director of The Anderson Forecast he plays a key role in the economic modeling and forecasting of the National, and California economies. He has conducted research in the areas of labor economics, industrial organization, statistics, and international monetary economics, focusing on the development of new data and the application of economic theory and statistical methods to policy issues. His current academic research is on specific skills, structural unemployment, and on energy efficiency in transportation. He is a regular presenter at Economic Conferences and is cited in the national media including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Reuters.He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1980 specializing in monetary economics and econometrics. He was formerly a professor of Economics at the University of Southern California and has held executive positions with McDonnell Douglas, FlightSafety International, and FlightSafety Boeing during a fifteen-year span in the aviation business. He also held a position with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors developing forecasting tools, and has advised banks, investors and financial institutions.
From 2000 to 2006, he was the Managing Principal of Deep Blue Economics, a consulting firm he founded. He has been the recipient of the Korda Fellowship, USC Outstanding Teacher, India Chamber of Commerce Jubilee Lecturer, and he is a Fulbright Scholar. He has published over 100 scholarly and popular articles on monetary economics, economic forecasting and analysis, labor economics, and industrial organization and he is the author of two books on monetary economics and exchange rates.
David Shulman is Distinguished Visiting Professor and a “Managing Director” at the Financial Leadership Program at Baruch College where he mentors students seeking front-office careers on Wall Street, and a Visiting Scholar/Senior Economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast where he is responsible for U.S. Macro. In addition, he is currently Managing Member of his LLC where he is engaged in investment and litigation consulting. He comments on his blog, http://shulmaven.blogspot.com.In March 2005, he retired from Lehman Brothers where he was Managing Director and Head REIT analyst. From 2001-04 he was voted on the Institutional Investor All Star Teams including First Team in 2002. Prior to joining Lehman Brothers in 2000 he was a Member and Senior Vice President at Ulysses Management LLC (1998-99) an investment manager of a private investment partnership and an offshore corporation whose total investment capital approximated $1 billion at the end of 1999.
From 1986-1997, Mr. Shulman was employed by Salomon Brothers Inc in various capacities. He was Director of Real Estate Research from 1987-91 and Chief Equity Strategist from 1992-97. In the latter capacity he was responsible for developing the Firm’s overall equity market view and maintaining the Firm’s list of recommended stocks. Mr. Shulman was widely quoted in the print and electronic media and he coined the terms “Goldilocks Economy” and “New Paradigm Economy”. In 1991, he was named a Managing Director and in 1990 he won the first annual Graaskamp Award for Excellence in Real Estate Research from the Pension Real Estate Association.
Prior to joining Salomon Brothers Inc., he was Vice President and Director of Research Planning at TCW Realty Advisors in Los Angeles. Earlier in his career Mr. Shulman was an academic. He was an Associate Professor of Management and Economics at the University of California at Riverside and Financial Economist at the UCLA Business Forecasting Project. In 2017, the David Shulman Endowed Excellence in Teaching Award Fund was established by a former student of his.
A graduate of Baruch College (1964), Mr. Shulman received his Ph.D. (1975) with a specialization in Finance and a M.B.A. (1966) from the UCLA Graduate School of Management. He is married and has three grown children.
William Yu joined the UCLA Anderson Forecast in 2011 as an economist. At Forecast he focuses on the economic modeling and forecasting of Los Angeles economy. He also conducts research and forecast on China’s economy, and its impacts on the US economy. His research interests include a wide range of economic and financial issues, such as time series econometrics, stock, bond, real estate, and commodity price dynamics, human capital, and innovation. He has published over a dozen research articles in Journal of Forecasting, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of International Money and Finance, etc. He also published op-ed articles in Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. He developed the City Human Capital Index and the Los Angeles City Employment Estimate and has been cited in the local, national and overseas media frequently including Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Time, Bloomberg, CBS Money Watch, Al Jazeera, U-T San Diego, LA Daily News, LA Daily Breeze, Straits Times, NBC, ABC, CNBC, CNN, and NPR, as well as various Chinese and Korean media.He received his bachelor’s degree in finance from National Taiwan University in 1995 and was an analyst in Fubon Financial Holding in Taipei from 1997 to 2000. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Washington where he was also an economics instructor and won two distinguished teaching awards. In 2006, he worked for the Frank Russell Investment Group for Treasury and corporate yields modeling and forecasting. From 2006 to 2011, he served as an assistant and an associate professor of economics at Winona State University where he taught courses including forecasting methods, managerial economics, international economics, and macroeconomics. Currently, he teaches business forecasting courses at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA Extension.
John R. Blevins (J.B.) ('11) is an adjunct professor who teaches strategic management for technology-based businesses. He specializes in emerging technologies that are disrupting traditional business models, including cloud computing, big data, social media, analytics, mobility and technology convergence. With his extensive industry experience, Blevins brings together high-technology sectors, such as aerospace, biotechnology, computer engineering, information technology, software/hardware and telecommunications, with the resources of UCLA Anderson, its students and faculty."Technology advances are creating new business opportunities and disrupting existing business models, enabling economic growth potential we've never seen before," says Blevins. "Today's management leadership must be willing to embrace the rapid pace of change and drive faster innovation. Through an incredible combination of research and adjunct professors, we offer a variety of courses, seminars, workshops, executive programs and industry engagement events that prepares our students for the challenges they face."
Blevins' work experience includes roles at Deloitte Consulting, Microsoft, Oracle and Shell Oil, where he held a variety of technology and management positions based in Houston, Dallas, New York, Miami, London and Los Angeles. He provides consulting services to the technology, telecommunications, media/entertainment, financial services, energy, CPG, health care, manufacturing and automotive industries and the public sector. He has expertise in strategy development, business-technology alignment, framework creation, venture capital investment decisions and new business model creation. Blevins speaks at academic and industry events covering technology-driven market changes, technology management leadership and other topics.
Blevins is the founder of Navigation Pointe, which provides advisory services and venture capital funding to the emerging technologies industry. He has a B.S. in civil engineering with heavy concentration in speech communications from the University of Alabama, as well as an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Ev Boyle is the Executive Director of LA-Tech.org, a nonprofit coalition of Los Angeles-area tech companies and community organizations working together to expand economic opportunity in under-served communities and help tackle the city’s most pressing problems. Ev is the former Associate Director of CCLP and the founding director of Civic Tech USC, an initiative that focuses on how technology can connect citizens to government and to each other in ways that improve democracy and civic life. Ev led CCLP’s work on civic technology and was the principal investigator for the 2015 report, Empowering the Public Through Open Data. Ev’s other research at USC included the Project on Presidential Primaries Reform and an initiative on mobile phones for public service, and he co-authored the 2012 report, Technology and Human Trafficking: The Rise of Mobile and the Diffusion of Technology-Facilitated Trafficking.
From 2007-2010, he was a co-founder of two award-winning technology start-ups in New York City and a producer of short documentaries for Current TV. More recently, he was a research assistant studying WikiLeaks at POLIS, the media and society think tank at the London School of Economics. Prior to his roles in start-ups and academia, Ev worked for the Washington, D.C.-based Democracy Alliance, where he developed investment strategies for building non-profit infrastructure.
He holds a joint M.Sc./M.A. in Global Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and the University of Southern California, and a B.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ev can be reached at eboyle@usc.edu or @evboyle on Twitter.
William Chun serves as the Deputy Mayor of Economic Development. Over two decades, he has been involved in a broad range of economic development projects and investment deals. Mr. Chun is charged with growing a prosperous economy; specifically creating jobs, attracting investment and increasing tourism. He oversees six departments totaling over 6,000 employees and a combined budget of $8.6 billion: Department of City Planning, Department of Building & Safety, Los Angeles World Airports, Port of Los Angeles, Department of Convention & Tourism Development, and the Economic & Workforce Development Department. He has worked on key initiatives for the Mayor such as raising the minimum wage, cutting the business tax, forming the Mayor's Tech Council and launching the Evolve Entertainment Fund.
Before joining the Mayor’s Office in 2013, Mr. Chun was Vice President at Capri Global, a private equity and investment manager with almost $4 billion of assets under management. He was responsible for sourcing and underwriting acquisitions, asset management and equity investment activities including origination, direct and joint venture investing.
Prior to Capri, he was at CRA/LA and at CBRE’s consulting group (NYSE: CBRE).
A native Angeleno, Mr. Chun holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics at Wesleyan University.
Austin Clements is a venture capitalist at TenOneTen Ventures where he invests in early stage technology companies. He began his career in investment management with AllianceBernstein and has since held roles as a tech investor at Creative Artists Agency, Digital Entertainment Ventures, and NY Angels. He also founded and managed Pi Digital Media, a Los Angeles based firm focused on the design and development of web and mobile applications. Austin is committed to encouraging underrepresented minorities to pursue careers in tech and entrepreneurship. He is an active volunteer in various local youth entrepreneurship programs and is on the Board of HBCU.vc and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. He received his MBA from NYU Stern and his BA from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA.
Jasmine Hill is a writer, educator, organizer and Ph.D candidate in Sociology at Stanford University. She is a National Poverty Fellow at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and co-editor of Inequality in the 21st Centurywith David B. Grusky (Westview Press 2017). Her dissertation aims to shed light on mechanisms creating and prohibiting Black social mobility. She also writes about the relationship between the Black middle class and their low-income family members. Before graduate school she worked as a non-profit consultant on issues related to the school-to-prison pipeline and domestic violence. She currently lives and collects data for the dissertation in the Greater Los Angeles area.
Alex Maleki is the Vice President of Business Development at Idealab. Prior to joining Idealab in 2008, Alex worked at two venture-backed startups focused on enterprise software and services (Net Effect, Mobile Automation), both of which were acquired. He holds a B.A. from UCSB, a J.D. from Southwestern University, and serves as the President of the Board of Logsdon School, a Board Member of Innovate Pasadena, and an Advisory Board Member of STEAM:CODERS.
Wes Nichols is a Board Partner at Upfront Ventures and an active technology investor and advisor. Wes is serial entrepreneur and an industry authority in predictive analytics, AI/Machine Learning, and attribution, creating and scaling solutions for global brands. Wes is the author of the Harvard Business Review cover story, Analytics 2.0, on next-generation analytics to drive more predictive CMO decision-making. Most recently, Wes was the Chief Strategy Officer at Neustar (NYSE: NSR), the leading company in authenticated identity for marketing and security. Neustar acquired his company, MarketShare, where he was co-founder and CEO. MarketShare’s analytics SaaS solutions are used by companies globally to drive resource allocation decisions and marketing investments, and is now the dominant market leader in the field of analytics, with its clients directing over $80 billion in marketing this year. MarketShare, recently acquired by Neustar for nearly a half a billion dollars, was backed by FTV Capital, Elevation Partners and Silver Lake, the world’s largest technology investor.
Prior to starting MarketShare, Wes was with Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC) as President and CEO of TBWA’s digital business, working with Nissan, Sony, Pfizer, and other brands. Prior, he was the founder and CEO of Direct Partners, building from scratch one of the industry’s first data-driven analytics companies, which was acquired by Omnicom Group.
Wes is a member of the Board of Directors of TrueCar (NASDAQ: TRUE) and BJ’s Restaurants (NASDAQ: BJRI), the LAPD Foundation, and a Trustee of Randolph-Macon College. Wes is an active member in both Young Presidents Organization (YPO) as well as the Pacific Council on International Policy.
Carmen’s focus at Make in LA is coaching entrepreneurs in finance and investment, managing fund operations, and developing investor relationships. She was formerly VP at Dimensional Fund Advisors where she scaled operations into new markets, including Latin America, Canada, and Europe. Carmen also served as a consultant to startups in areas such as operations, fundraising, and growth strategy. Carmen has an MBA from Berkeley-Haas, an MA in sports management from USF, and a BA in economics from USC. She is a board member of CCEO YouthBuild, on the advisory board at Santa Monica City College’s Business Department, and a contributing writer for Latinas in Business.