
Applying MBA knowledge in Real Time
The capstone project is your opportunity to apply the tools from the first two years of the program to a real-world business challenge in real time. Whether you’re part of a consulting team working for an international tech company or creating your own business from the ground up, UCLA Anderson offers proven and exciting options to satisfy this requirement.
Program (GAP)
Students work with an international tech company looking to access new markets, and deliver investment-quality business plans after six months of research
Project (BCP)
BCP gives you the chance to work with a team of classmates to develop an implementation plan and launch your own business
An investment fund managed by student portfolio managers dedicated to the pursuit of favorable risk-adjusted returns
The Assignment: Results-driven, real-world benefits
GAP companies are selected based on their track record, their potential for growth and must meet specific corporate and investment requirements.
If you are an organization interested in participating in the Global Access Program

"The team identified a cultural divide with the organization. We immediately implemented the recommendation and saw a cultural shift, which boosted morale. It was as though we had a different company."
SIMON OXENHAM
Managing Director of Convic (Australia)
19 years advising GAP

Phone: (310) 206-8086 / (310) 825-2505
janis.forman@anderson.ucla.eduDr. Forman is the founder and director of the Management Communication Program at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. In this capacity, she teaches communication strategy and practices in the full-time and executive MBA programs and trains a staff who teach communications across the curriculum. She has taught corporate communication for the last decade as a faculty advisor for more than a hundred MBA "Living Cases," which are extended international strategic studies for multi-national companies, such as Microsoft, Hughes, Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Disney, and for start-up firms in Austria, Australia, Chile, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, New Zealand, and the United States. The Fully-Employed MBA Program and the Global Access Program (GAP) in which she teaches business planning and investor communications were ranked first in the United States by Business Week in 2008. She was a founding faculty member of the GAP program.
She was named the outstanding researcher in 1995 by the Association for Business Communication. The award is based on her entire publication record and its pivotal role in extending research in her discipline and in educating managers. She is the recipient of numerous awards for research, including fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Center for International Business Education and Research, the Council of Public Relations Firms, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Her book, The Power of Corporate Communication, written with Professor Paul Argenti of the Tuck School, won the Distinguished Publication Award for 2003 from the Association for Business Communication. Dr. Forman has published three other books, including The Random House Guide to Business Writing, and numerous articles in publications such as The Journal of Business Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Corporate Reputation Review, and Strategy & Business. She is a frequent presenter at international research and business forums and in on the editorial board of Business Communication Quarterly.
Dr. Forman is under contract with Stanford University Press for a book on storytelling and organizations, a project partially funded by the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Her current research focuses on storytelling ("When Stories Create an Organization's Future," Strategy & Business ; "Leaders as Storytellers: Finding Waldo," Business Communication Quarterly) as well as on the related subjects of the role of communication in the implementation of organizational strategy ("The Communication Advantage" in Hatch et al., The Expressive Organization, Oxford University Press, and featured as one of the outstanding articles in management in The Financial Times Book of Management) and the role of storytelling and translation in producing effective strategic communications ("More than Survival: The Discipline of Business Communication and the Uses of Translation," The Journal of Business Communication).
She is the faculty director for the Executive Education Program on Advanced Strategic Management for European-based corporate communication professionals and has consulted to a wide variety of organizations, including Cap Gemini/Ernst & Young, Invesco, Knapp Communications, Colony Capital, the MTA, and BBDO. She has been a visiting professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of California at San Diego's Rady School of Business, and the University of Lugano.
Education
Ph.D. 1980, Rutgers College
Interests
Communications
Published Papers
Janis Forman. (Second Quarter 1999). When Stories Create an Organization's Future. Strategy & Business, Issue 15.
Janis Forman and Patricia Katsky. (Fall 1986). The Group Report: A Problem in Small Group or Writing Processes. The Journal of Business Communication
14 years advising GAP

Phone: (310) 825-3564 / Fax: (310) 267-2193
esussman@anderson.ucla.eduD4.20
Since 1995, Eric has been a lecturer in accounting and real estate at the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management, where he has been voted Teacher of the Year thirteen times by Anderson�s MBA students, and has been awarded the Citibank Teaching Award (1998) and the Neidorf Decade Teaching Award (2008), both voted upon by a committee of faculty members. He has also received recognition by Businessweek as one of the Top Ten Most Popular Business School Professors in the country.
He teaches in the areas of cost/managerial accounting, financial accounting (beginning through advanced), financial statement analysis, equity valuation, corporate financial reporting, and real estate investment and finance to undergraduate, graduate, and Executive Education students. He created Insight FSA, an analytical software tool to automatically and critically measure, evaluate, and report upon the financial accounting and corporate reporting risk for all public companies via Edgar On-line.
In addition, he has advised numerous Full-time and Fully Employed MBA field study teams and consulted for large and small firms, nationally and globally, and is a frequent lecturer on varied financial, accounting, and corporate reporting topics. He has led student travel groups to Brazil, China, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi. He has served as an expert witness and consultant for commercial litigation, involving matters of corporate financial reporting and disclosure, audit effectiveness, valuation, real estate due diligence and related practices, and overall damage analyses.
Outside of campus, Mr. Sussman is president of Amber Capital, Inc., Manager of Fountain Management, LLC and Clear Capital, LLC, and Managing Partner of Sequoia Real Estate Partners, and the Pacific Value Opportunities Funds, which have acquired, rehabilitated, developed, and managed over two million square feet of residential and commercial real estate in the past 20 years. The firms' portfolio presently consists of industrial, multi-family residential, single-family residential, and retail properties (approximately 2,200 residential units and some 500,000 square feet of commercial space).
He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Causeway Capital�s group of funds (International Value, Emerging Markets, Global Value, and Global Absolute Return Funds, which collectively have in excess of $5.0 billion in assets), sits on the Board of Directors of Pacific Charter School Development, Inc. and Bentley-Forbes, LLC; and was former Chairman of the Presidio Fund and former Audit Committee Chair of Atlantic Inertial Systems, Inc., a producer and manufacturer of electromagnetic sensors. He received his MBA from Stanford, with honors, in 1993, after graduating Summa cum Laude from UCLA in 1987. He is a licensed CPA in the State of California.
Teaching Focus
Issues in Corporate Financial Reporting, Financial Statement Analysis and Valuation, Complex Deals, Cost Measurement and Evaluation, Real Estate Investment and Finance
Education
MBA 1993, Stanford University
B.A. Business and Economics, 1987, UCLA
Interests
Auditing, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Detection, Personal Finance, Real Estate, Asset Valuation, Shareholder Litigation, Cost Evaluation and Measurement
Recognition
Neidorf �Decade� Award
11 years advising GAP

Jonathan G. Lasch, Ph.D., is the Executive Director for the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California (AMI-USC), where he brings more than 25 years of experience in science and technology development and evaluation in the fields of biomedical instruments and systems, biotechnology, chemistry, and materials science. He is a Research Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering and holds a courtesy appointment as a Professor of Clinical Entrepreneurship in the Greif Center of the Marshall School of Business at USC.
Prior to joining AMI-USC he served as a Managing Director of Convergent Ventures (CV), an early stage life sciences venture investment and development company. He has served as chairman or member of the boards of directors and CEO of several CV portfolio companies. From 2002-2007, he was on the board of directors of Precision Dynamics Corporation, a privately held healthcare products company, and he currently serves on the board of directors of the Southern California Biomedical Council. Dr. Lasch has held leadership positions at Materia, a materials science company spun out of Caltech, where he served as founding President and CEO, and Cyrano Sciences, a Caltech spin- out based on chemical sensor technology. Previously, he served as vice president, technology development for The Scripps Research Institute, the largest not-for-profit biomedical research institute in the United States and was director of research, biotechnology, for PPG Industries.
He is entering his sixth year as a UCLA Anderson FEMBA GAP faculty advisor, and he served two years as the Director of the EMBA Field Study Program.
Education
B.S. Biological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso
Ph.D. Chemistry, University of Texas at Austin
9 years advising GAP

UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1985, Peter Cowen has been a technology serial entrepreneur, angel investor, advisor to startups and an investment banker. Today, he is Managing Director at Sutton Capital Partners a middle market technology advisory firm. The focus is on enterprise and Saas software, digital technology and tech- enabled outsourced services. He is currently on the board of 4 venture-backed companies.
Previously, Mr. Cowen co-founded three companies that were sold to strategic investors—one in computer networks (DataVoice Solutions Inc.), another in biometric security (Biometric ID Inc) and the other in logistic fleet optimization (TransDecisions Inc.). After selling his first company he traveled around the world for a year, primarily in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and has visited over 40 countries.
Mr. Cowen has been an angel investor in over 50 early stage companies and VC funds, primarily in digital technology, including Cognition(sold to Nuance NSDQ: NUAN), StyleHaul (sold to Bertelsmann) , Mind Body, Inc. (NSDQ: MB), Pulse (NSDQ: PLSE) and ESalon. He is a foundingmember of Tech Coast Angels, Los Angeles, part of the largest angel network in the country. Before that, he worked in marketing at Unilever and Hewlett Packard, and then worked with the Israeli Export Institute to help Israeli technology companies into the U.S. Mr. Cowen also served on the board of directors of the UCLA Anderson Alumni for over 10 years, and created the “Recurring Revenue Conference” which is the largest conference in Southern California focused on the subscription economy. He has been a GAP advisor for 9 years.
Education
MBA, Finance, UCLA Anderson School of Management
B.A., Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
6 years advising GAP

Daniel Nathanson has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, executive, investor, consultant and educator, with accom- plishments in building businesses, creating financial value, and helping fellow entrepreneurs achieve success. He is a professor of Business Plan Development and New Venture Initiation at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, a position he has held since 2008. In addition to teaching, Dr. Nathanson serves as a faculty advisor to student teams conducting capstone field study projects. In 2010, he became Managing Director of SJ Investment Company (SJIC), an investment fund providing capital, oversight, and direction to high potential, early stage companies that have demonstrated “proof of concept.” SJIC also finances proven operating companies to facilitate strategic growth opportunities.
Dr. Nathanson began his executive career as the EVP and Chief Corporate Planner in charge of Mergers and Acquisitions at Ver- nitron Corporation, a publicly traded medical equipment and diversified electronics firm. As the Executive Vice President, he was responsible for the overall direction and financial performance of the company. He founded and served as CEO of CRS, a nation- wide turnkey point-of-sale computer company. Developing this state-of-the-art technology company from its inception, he guided CRS to become the leading company in its field.
After selling CRS in 1993, Dr. Nathanson accepted a position as Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where he taught entrepreneurship and business strategy. While at NYU, he founded S.M.A.R.T. Management Consulting, specializing in helping small to mid-size entrepreneurs successfully grow their businesses. He also served as Chairman of two groups of CEOs for Vistage, an international organization of CEOs with over 14,000 members.
Shortly after founding the Washington Square Capital Fund (WSCF), a formalized angel group that invests in early-stage compa- nies, Dr. Nathanson left the Stern School to focus on investing activities and to take active leadership roles in a number of early stage ventures, including the CEO at Tickmark Solutions. In less than 18 months under his leadership, revenues of this software company rose from $500,000 to almost $4 million. In 2002, he engineered the successful sale of Tickmark.
Dr. Nathanson served as CEO and President of a promotional products firm, followed by an asset management venture. He worked with company founders to develop strategies, build infrastructures, raise capital and establish important strategic relationships in order to achieve successful growth and build sustainable value.
Dr. Nathanson is the co-author of Strategy Implementation: The Role of Structure and Process and author of a number of published articles in the area of strategy implementation. He is also a member of the Tech Coast Angels investment organization. He has been a GAP advisor for 7 years.
Education
Ph.D., Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, MBA, NYU’s Graduate School of Business
B.A., Washington University in St. Louis, MO
5 years advising GAP

Terry Kramer has a 30 year career in telecommunications and technology. For 18 of those 25 years, Mr. Kramer worked for Vodafone Group Plc/ AirTouch Communications in a variety of roles domestically and internationally, including Group Strategy and Business Improvement Officer, Regional President, Vodafone Americas which included oversight of Vodafone's 45% interest in Verizon Wireless and Vodafone's venture capital activities, Group Human Resources Officer & Chief of Staff, President AirTouch Paging and Vice President/GM AirTouch Cellular-Southwest Market. In June 2012, Mr. Kramer received an appointment by President Obama to serve as Ambassador, Head of U.S. Delegation for the World Conference on International Telecommunications which was held in December 2012 in Dubai. In this role, he led a 100+ person delegation of U.S. government, industry, and civil society representatives negotiating a treaty on international telecommunications policy. This delegation formulated and communicated the U.S. policy regarding the criticality of a free and open internet, the criticality of inclusive, multi stakeholder governance, the need to proactively address cybersecurity threats and the need for liberalized, open markets which encourage accelerated broadband access in markets worldwide.
Mr. Kramer is currently a full time Adjunct Professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, teaching two courses--the foundational technology management course and a course on the evolution and innovation in the mobile communications industry. He is also a Faculty Advisor in the Global Access Program (GAP) and the Strategic Management Research Program (SMR), advising students working on client assignments involved in new market entry, product development and business strategy. Furthermore, he currently serves as Chair to Thiota. In 2017, he was awarded UCLA Anderson's teaching award from the Fully Employed Executive MBA's. From 2011 to 2013, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Harvard Business School. Mr. Kramer currently sits on the Boards/Advisory Boards of TeleSign, TangoCard, RapidSOS, Textpert, the Harvard Business School California Research Center, UCLA Economics Department Board of Visitors and is the Chairman of Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco.
Education
MBA, Harvard University
3 years advising GAP
Jeffrey Lapin is the immediate past President of Tech Coast Angels in Los Angeles. He has made over 20 startup investments in the past five years, and serves on many company boards and advises several companies.
Mr. Lapin began his career as an attorney with Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp in Los Angeles. He then served in various executive capacities with Starwood Hotels & Resorts and its predecessors (NYSE: HOT), from January 1995 to June 1996 as President and Chief Operating Officer, and from May 1991 to January 1995 as President and Chief Executive Officer.
In 1996, Mr. Lapin served as President of House of Blues Hospitality, Inc. and Executive Vice President of House of Blues Entertain-ment, Inc.
Two years later, he began serving as Vice Chairman of THQ Inc. (NASDAQ: THQI), a developer and publisher of interactive soft- ware. During his time with THQ, Mr. Lapin also served as Chief Operating Officer and Director of the company.
Mr. Lapin was the Director and Chief Executive Officer of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), a developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software (sales of $1.2 billion).
From 2009 to 2010, Mr. Lapin served as the Chief Executive Officer of Atari, S.A., a French public company that develops and pub- lishes online and boxed video games and related applications. Prior, Mr. Lapin served as a Director and Chief Executive Officer and President of RazorGator Interactive Group, an ecommerce company which sells secondary event tickets and related services.
Mr. Lapin has served as a private consultant to several companies, including In-Fusio Group, Riverdeep, Ubisoft, Capcom, and Four Queens. He has served and continues to serve as Director of several for profit and nonprofit entities. He has been a GAP advisor for 4 years.
Education
J.D., Loyola Law School
B.A., Economics, University of California, Los Angeles
3 years advising GAP
Todd Senturia is a partner based in Bain & Company’s Los Angeles office. Prior to moving to California, Mr. Senturia spent the first part of his Bain career in the Boston office, and three years working in the Asian and Australian practices. He has led projects ranging from corporate and business-unit strategy to the detailed design and implementation of large-scale transformational restructuring and turnaround programs. He has also supported buyer or seller in several merger & acquisition negotiations.
As one of the global leaders of Bain’s Results Delivery/Change Management capability area, Mr. Senturia has personally supported more than 18 large-scale, multi-year client change and transformation programs. He is also a core member of Bain’s performance improvement, organization, tech/telecom and industrial practices. Since 2010, he has also taken on responsibility for co-leading the firm’s internal Professional Development and Training Environment.
Over his career, Mr. Senturia has worked for Bain clients in North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. He has significant depth of experience in the technology and telecom practices, including semiconductors and computers, wireline and wireless telecommunications, and cable television. Mr. Senturia has also served multiple aerospace and defense, industrial, and automotive clients on issues ranging from growth to cost reduction. His consumer products/retail clients have included branded packaged goods, consumer electronics, consumer imaging, and a wide variety of food categories.
Prior to joining Bain, Mr. Senturia spent almost nine years on the senior management team of a small high technology sensor and instrumentation company, where he served most recently as Vice President of Marketing and Sales, as well as Treasurer. He was also a founding board member of Polychromix, a VC-backed startup in the optical sensing sector that was recently purchased by Thermo-Electron.
Mr. Senturia joined UCLA Anderson as an Executive in Residence for Management Consulting in 2011, and became a GAP faculty advisor in 2012.
His Master’s thesis, “Globalizing the Emerging High Technology Company”, was subsequently published in Industrial Marketing Management. Todd Senturia has been a GAP advisor for 4 years.
Education
M.S., Management, MIT Sloan School of Management
B.A., East Asian Studies, Harvard College
3 years advising GAP

Gary Hutchinson has over 30+ years of experience in business and entrepreneurship. He served as a panel judge for the Global Access Program (GAP) at The UCLA Anderson School of Management from 2003-2013. In 2014, he accepted a position as faculty advisor to the program.
Mr. Hutchinson currently serves as the President and CEO of Biothelium, a startup focused on the cardiology market with tech- nology developed in conjunction with the Alfred E. Mann Institute at the University of Southern California (AMI) and U.C. San Francisco. He also serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at AMI, which is a non-profit organization that supports research, develop- ment and commercialization of biomedical devices and other technologies. In addition, Mr. Hutchinson is Executive Chairman of Nelson-Miller Inc, a leading company in electronic human interface solutions serving the healthcare, defense and consumer industry markets.
Mr. Hutchinson began his career as the Chairman, President and CEO of Zymed, a privately held company focused on the research, development, production and marketing, and sales of Holter EKG Ambulatory Monitoring Systems, Event Monitoring, In Patient Telemetry Monitoring Systems and Trans-telephonic Systems. Through extensive technology development and strategic alliances, the company became the industry leader in Ambulatory Monitoring and Arrhythmia Detection Algorithms. The company grew to $25M in sales and $5M in EBITDA.
Following the acquisition of Zymed by Philips Medical Systems, Mr. Hutchinson assumed the VP/GM position of the Cardiology Division. The $200M business unit was responsible for manufacturing, research and development, sales and marketing world-wide for non-invasive cardiology products focused on EKG Carts, Holter / Event Monitoring, EKG Data Storage & Analysis Systems and Transtelephonic EKG monitoring. Offices were also maintained in Shanghai, China.
From 2002 to 2010, Mr. Hutchinson served as President and CEO of Precision Dynamics Corporation (PDC), a privately held company is the leading manufacturer of healthcare and patron management identification solutions. In late 2010 he assumed a directorship and executive advisory role through the sale of the company to Brady Corporation in December 2012. The company grew from $43M to $170M in sales, and from $2M to $30M in EBITDA. It established European headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, developed manufacturing operations in Tijuana, Mexico, and partnered with Water Street Healthcare Partners, a Chicago private equity firm. Furthermore, the company acquired the wristband product line from Hollister, Inc., (Libertyville, IL) and TimeMed Labeling Systems, Inc. (Burr Ridge, IL).
Mr. Hutchinson has served on ten boards of directors, and contributed as advisor and consultant to twelve assignments.
Education
B.A. in History from Ohio State University, 1971
2 years advising GAP

Molly Schmid has specific expertise in guiding early stage companies and technology commercialization, stemming from her roles in scientific management, project leadership, and business development in four biotechnology companies. Her career has been about equally split between academia and industry. Currently, she serves primarily as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC and as a Senior Counselor for TriTechSBDC.
Dr. Schmid has held senior leadership positions in the biotech industry, where she served as Group Vice President, Life Science at ieCrowd (Riverside, CA), Senior Vice President of Preclinical Programs at Affinium Pharmaceuticals (Toronto, ON), Director of Genomics and Bioinformatics at Genencor International (Palo Alto CA), and Vice President of Research Alliances at Microcide Pharmaceuticals (Mountain View, CA).
In these companies, she was part of executive teams that raised over $200MM in funding through venture capital, corporate partnerships, public markets, and US and Canadian federal research grants. Her experiences with these companies included two IPO’s, two compounds that entered human clinical trials, international, multi-year, multi-million dollar corporate partnerships with a number of companies, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Daiichi Pharmaceuticals, and building and managing first-rate scientific teams, while satisfying the business needs of the organizations. She has nine issued U.S. patents, and several others pending.
She began her career in academia, where she has had a distinguished career. Most recently, she was Professor and Entrepreneur- in-Residence at Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, CA and formerly an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. In addition, she has held adjunct professor positions at the University of Southern California (Marshall School of Business), San Diego State University (Biology), and Claremont Graduate University (Drucker School of Management). Dr. Schmid has served on numerous NSF and NIH grant review panels, and served as chair of an NIH SBIR/STTR grant review panel for several years. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a Searle Scholar, and a Damon-Runyon Fellow.
She has embedded herself in the Southern California entrepreneurial community since moving here in 2005. She is a member and past president of the Inland SoCal Tech Coast Angels, a member of the TCA Board of Governors (2011-2014), and a Senior Counselor for TriTech Small Business Development Center. Molly Schmid has been a GAP advisor for 3 years.
Education
Ph.D., Biology University of Utah
B.S., Biology, University at Albany - SUNY
BCP Success Story: Bellanove (Class of 2017)
BellaNove offers a monthly rental service for modern, sophisticated, professional maternity clothing items, aiming to help all women stay sharp and stylish from boardrooms to doctor check-ups with less hassle and fuss.

BellaNove Founder and Wolfen Fellow, Jenny Leung (’17) launched the company October 2017.

Internet, Business and Intellectual Property Attorney
Cohen Business Law Group

Investor
Upfront Ventures

Subject to minimum liquidity requirements, the Fund may hold the stock of any publicly traded U.S. firm on an approved list of stocks. A portion of the long-term profits of the fund will be donated to the UCLA Anderson School of Management for support in student scholarships and for support of research in finance.