Faculty Advisors

Our experienced faculty advisors support our students throughout the six-month AMR project.

Each team is assigned a faculty advisor who works closely with the team to monitor progress, review documents and presentations, and encourage academic and professional growth. The faculty advisor does not directly manage the interface with companies - that is the purview of the student team.

Many of our advisors have directed and provided consulting services to leading companies all over the world in addition to their academic accomplishments, and so both our students and our partner organizations benefit from their wealth of expertise. They are chosen both for their skills as generalists and for their specialties.

Faculty Advisors

Michael Montgomery

Lecturer, UCLA Anderson School of Management

AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Mergers, Strategy, Advising, Investment Banking, Media and Technology, Corporate Development

Michael J. Montgomery is an advisor and investor in early-stage companies, an active board member and a lecturer at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Montgomery was the co-founder and president of Montgomery & Co. LLC, a boutique investment bank focused on media and technology, from 2000 through 2013. It specialized in mergers and acquisitions and equity financings for private and public companies, and became known for its focus on the intersection of media and technology. Montgomery & Co. merged its operations into Signal Hill in 2013.

Prior to Montgomery & Co., Montgomery served as president and CEO of Sega GameWorks LLC, a joint venture between Sega, Universal Studios and DreamWorks. It owned and operated family entertainment centers across the United States.

Prior to joining Sega GameWorks, Montgomery was a partner and senior executive of DreamWorks SKG from 1995 to 1996. He was the lead executive for the company’s $900-million equity raise in 1995. He also led its real estate efforts to secure land to build its studio in Glendale and its attempted studio at Playa Vista.

Montgomery joined DreamWorks after a nine-year career at The Walt Disney Company. As assistant treasurer and then vice president and treasurer, he was responsible for numerous innovative financing arrangements conceived and executed for Disney. This includes the $720-million non-recourse advance for the royalties of Tokyo Disneyland, the first large royalty financing conceived for intellectual property. He was also instrumental in Silver Screen 2, 3 and 4, and the $600-million Touchwood film financing. He also proposed and then played a key role in the execution of the initial public offering of Euro Disney in 1989. Upon returning from Paris, he conceived of the first bond with a return indexed to an unrelated security or index. The $927-million zero coupon bond indexed into Euro Disney’s stock value pioneered, via the SEC and Wall Street, the use of derivative-like structures imbedded in bonds. In 1993, he moved to Paris to serve as directeur general and CFO of Euro Disney, where he played an important role in a difficult financial and operational restructuring.

Before joining Disney, Montgomery worked at ARCO in its treasury organization. From 1980 to 1984, he also served as CFO and later president of Arco Solar Europe, a subsidiary of Arco Solar, in Milan, Italy, and later in London. At that time, Arco Solar was the largest solar photovoltaic company in the world.

Montgomery has been a director of Synacor Inc. since December 2011. He was a director of DreamWorks Animation SKG from July 2006 thorough to its sale in August 2016. He chairs the audit committee for Synacor and had the same role at DreamWorks. He is also on the boards of Seriously, Air Bud Entertainment, Open Methods and M3Bio, all private companies.

Montgomery received an MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College (1977), where he earned a B.A., magna cum laude (1976), as a Rufus Choate Scholar.

Phone: (310) 463-1389
Email:
michael.montgomery@anderson.ucla.edu

Education
MBA, Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business
B.A., Economics, Dartmouth College

Paul Park

Lecturer & Senior Faculty Advisor, AMR, UCLA Anderson School of Management

AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Business Law, Nonprofit Law and Management, Social Entrepreneurship

Paul S. Park is a lecturer at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he serves as a faculty advisor for the Applied Management Research program, the Global Access Program and the Strategic Management Research program. Park’s field research projects have focused on international and social impact clients with a variety of business objectives, including venture initiation, market entry, marketing strategy and supply chain management. Park also a lecturer at the UCLA International Institute, where he teaches courses on social entrepreneurship and international business.

Park is a principal of Bethel Counsel PC and provides corporate law and general counsel services to startup, real estate and social enterprise clients. His practice areas include venture initiation, corporate compliance and contract negotiation. Current and past clients have worked in the following industries: technology, health care, real estate development, retail, media, education and social services.

Park previously worked with the Cesar Chavez Foundation, a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, in a variety of executive capacities, including executive director, general counsel and chief operating officer. He began his career at the global law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, working on secured lending transactions, venture capital financings and mergers and acquisitions.

Park is admitted to practice in the State of California, and holds a JD from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, where he served as an editor for the UCLA Law Review. He also received an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was awarded a Global Access Program Fellowship. Paul earned an AB with distinction in History from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Park was previously appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to serve as the president of the City of Los Angeles’ Board of Neighborhood Commissioners. He is also a past president and board member of the Korean American Bar Association of Southern California. He is an active member of the State Bar of California as well as the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and he serves on the board of a number of nonprofit organizations.

Phone: (310) 825-8388
Email:
paul.park@anderson.ucla.edu

Education
MBA, UCLA Anderson School of Management
J.D., UCLA
A.B., Cornell University

Constança Esteves-Sorenson

Adjunct Professor, UCLA Anderson School of Management

AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Network Management

John Ullmen, Ph.D., is a continuing lecturer at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He has taught for 15 years across the MBA, FEMBA, EMBA and executive education programs.

Ullmen received the Teaching Excellence Award from the executive MBAs, which recognizes “the faculty member who has had the most positive impact on you, contributing to your knowledge, business acumen and world view.”

Several global executive search firms, along with private equity firms and other organizations, ask Ullmen to coach senior leaders in their current roles or as they transition into next-level roles.

Over the past two decades, Ullmen has conducted hundreds of in-depth executive coaching engagements with leaders across a wide range of Fortune 500 firms and industry leaders in technology, media, entertainment, consumer products, health care, biotech, finance, banking, real estate, professional services, construction, defense and government.

Ullmen’s book, Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In, was selected as one of the “Top 30 Books in Business” of the year by the leading business executive summary firm, and is in print around the world in many languages.

Ullmen’s writing also has been featured in Harvard Business Review, on MSNBC, in the Los Angeles Times and at other major media outlets.

Ullmen’s video programs on LinkedIn Learning have millions of paid views, have been selected for featured lists and have been translated into multiple languages. Programs include Executive Leadership, Developing Executive Presence, Influencing Others, Mindfulness, Communication Foundations, Connecting with Executives, Executive Coaching and Working with an Executive Coach.

Ullmen is a frequent speaker on leadership, executive presence and influence.

Ullmen began his career as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a lead systems engineer for a global Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence program.

Phone: (310) 266-1559
Email:
john.ullmen@anderson.ucla.edu

Education
Ph.D., Organizational Behavior, UCLA Anderson School of Management
MPP, Harvard University
B.S., Engineering Mechanics, U.S. Air Force Academy

William Yu

Economist, Anderson Forecast, UCLA Anderson School of Management Forecast

AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Economics, Forecasting, Data Analytics, U.S.–China Economies, Housing Markets, Human Capital

William Yu joined the UCLA Anderson Forecast in 2011 as an economist. At Forecast, Yu focuses on economic modeling, forecasting and the Los Angeles economy. He also conducts research on and forecasts for China’s economy and its relationship with the U.S. economy. His research interests include a wide range of economic and financial issues, such as time series econometrics, data analytics, housing markets, human capital and innovation.

Yu teaches business forecasting, predictive analytics and data science courses at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA Extension. In 2019, he received the distinguished instructor award for digital technology from UCLA Extension. He also serves as a faculty advisor for the Applied Management Research program at UCLA Anderson.

Yu has published over a dozen research articles in Journal of Forecasting, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of International Money and Finance and others. He also wrote op-ed articles in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. He developed the City Human Capital Index and the Los Angeles City Employment Estimate, and he wrote the quarterly U.S.–China economic report. He has been cited in the local, national and overseas media frequently, including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Bloomberg, CBS Money Watch, Al Jazeera, U-T San Diego, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Daily Breeze, Straits Times, NBC, ABC, CNBC, CNN and NPR, as well as various Chinese and Korean media. He was invited as a speaker for various events, including the annual Wilbur K. Woo Greater China Business Conference, Cathay Bank economic outlook luncheons and National Association for Business Economics conferences.

Yu 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. 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.

Phone: (310) 825-7805
Email:
william.yu@anderson.ucla.edu

Education
Ph.D., Economics, University of Washington
B.S., Finance, National Taiwan University

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