UCLA Anderson EMBA Is a Fourth-Generation Problem Solver

One glance at his LinkedIn profile and it’s easy to conclude that Michael Whitt (’06) is difficult to pigeonhole.

He’s an inventor — holder of more than a dozen medical device patents. He’s a teacher — boasting nearly a decade at his current post on the bioengineering faculty at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, following prior stints at Notre Dame, Miami Dade College and Purdue. He’s a mentor — currently a co-adviser for Cal Poly SLO’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers and chair of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, after previously supporting the advancement of minority youth and high-potential, low-opportunity students in his work with the Center for Leadership Development in Indianapolis and the Academy of Business Leadership in Rosemead, California. And Whitt is a successful entrepreneur — founder of two startups in which he continues to play an active leadership role.

“I like to solve problems,” Whitt says when asked what all these pursuits have in common. He’s quick to add: “It runs in my family.”

Indeed, if you trace the two sides of his lineage, Whitt is a fourth-generation problem-solver. And, though he was the first in his family to earn a Ph.D., he humbly insists that he ranks fourth among the group. Whitt’s father was a physicist who contributed to the development of PLATO systems, the first computer-assisted educational device, at the University of Illinois. His grandfather was the first Black chief of detectives in Springfield, Illinois, and, despite not finishing high school, was the only officer in the town’s history to receive a perfect score on the sergeant’s exam. And Whitt’s great-grandfather, who played a pivotal role in the design of Karlson speakers in the 1950s, “was probably the best engineer in our family,” though in that era, as a Black man, he was never conferred the title of engineer.

Whitt’s inherited problem-solving propensity is what led him to UCLA Anderson’s EMBA program two decades ago. His career was already an unqualified success: After graduating from Purdue with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering, Whitt held a series of positions in private industry, including 13 years as a senior engineer at Eli Lilly and Guidant — during which he went back to school to earn his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in biomedical engineering, focusing on medical instrumentation and hemodynamics.

But by 2004, Whitt found himself at a crossroads — facing a problem in need of solving. “I had worked for large, Fortune 500 companies, and I was looking for a new challenge,” he says. “I got a call from a headhunter about a medical device startup that wanted to give me free reign to solve problems. When I took that position, had an opportunity to meet with investors, and got to see how that all worked, I began to think back on the cardiovascular research I did in graduate school and decided I wanted to learn what I could do to start a company with one of my own ideas. I had read about UCLA Anderson’s Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and I knew that for someone with my aspirations, UCLA was the best place.”

Enrolling in the Anderson Executive MBA program midway through his career not only instilled in Whitt the entrepreneurial skills he had sought, it also led, both directly and indirectly, to the two promising startups he now co-leads.

On the first day of classes, Whitt met Kathy Magliato (’06), a cardiothoracic surgeon who had also decided to go the entrepreneurial route — in her case, out of frustration at the growing number of young women she was operating on for heart disease that could have been prevented with earlier diagnosis. In the last 40 years, Whitt notes, more women than men have died of heart disease, and two-thirds of women were asymptomatic prior to their cardiovascular events. One of the major problems has been the absence of a noninvasive way to track changes in the health of the arteries, where the earliest signs of cardiovascular disease occur.

After Whitt told Magliato that, for his biomedical engineering Ph.D. dissertation, he had begun development of a “smart” blood pressure cuff that could noninvasively measure endothelial dysfunction (the first warning of arterial disease), they decided to collaborate. For their class project in the entrepreneurship course taught by George Abe, a UCLA Anderson adjunct assistant professor, Whitt and Magliato developed a commercialization plan. Ultimately, that project became Cordex Systems. The company, which Whitt and Magliato co-founded in 2009, has designed, patented, prototyped and tested its SmartCuff device in more than 700 patients. SmartCuff is now in clinical trials at Johns Hopkins University as it moves closer to regulatory clearance.

Serendipity and another UCLA Anderson connection fueled a second promising startup: Indianapolis-based ReproHealth Technologies Inc., which Whitt co-founded in 2021. While visiting his family in Indiana, Whitt met James Donahue, a physician who specializes in reproductive medicine, and together they began working on an intravaginal culture device to improve human fertility. But their direction would change after Donohue met Anderson alumna Juliette MacKay (’21), founder and CEO of the agricultural startup EVOIA, at a professional meeting. In that chance encounter, MacKay — who unexpectedly passed away in May 2023 — explained to Donahue that the product he and Whitt were developing would have enormous utility for farmers. “It turns out that for cattle producers, the success rate for standard reproduction is extremely low and they spend a lot of money and time on these efforts,” Whitt says. “We wouldn’t have known that if Jim hadn’t met and become friends with Juliette.”

Following MacKay’s advice, Whitt and Donahue shifted ReproHealth Technologies’ focus to advancing assisted reproduction in agriculture. They brought in expertise in veterinary reproductive medicine and proceeded under the mantra “We bring the IVF lab to the farm,” with technology designed to improve cattle fertility success and lower farmers’ out-of-pocket costs. For Whitt, who had no previous agricultural background, the pivot has resulted in some unexpected experiences — from attending the American Farm Bureau Federation conference and winning an agricultural pitch competition to briefly being charged by a 900-pound cow. “In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would be talking about the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in a cow uterus,” Whitt says, laughing. “It’s funny where life takes us.”

Whitt’s ReproHealth Technologies brings the veterinary IVF lab to farms; in one visit, he and colleagues were briefly charged by a 900-pound cow

When he’s not attending to his business ventures, Whitt can be found on the Cal Poly SLO campus, relishing the opportunity to teach and mentor students along with pursuing his research interests in hemodynamics, product development and vascular mechanics. “These students are amazing — they’re going to change the world,” he marvels. “I teach them what I’ve learned, but they bring perspectives I don’t have, and I learn from them as well.” During his decade on the Cal Poly SLO faculty, Whitt has continued his career-long dedication to supporting minority and disadvantaged youth, including as co-adviser for the campus chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers — an organization founded in 1971 at Purdue, where Whitt completed his undergraduate education. Last year, Whitt was honored with Cal Poly SLO’s MLK Legacy Award, which recognizes a campus community member who upholds the values of Martin Luther King Jr. “by leading with love and hope to create a better campus for all.”

Whitt says the most important value he retained from his UCLA Anderson experience was the importance of teamwork. “Here I was, an engineer learning accounting with people who were CFOs,” he recalls. “At first, I was intimidated, but everyone looked out for each other and shared their expertise … And today I can teach engineering economics. I tell my students that UCLA Anderson is like family. I wouldn’t trade those relationships for anything.”