CIOs and other leaders will learn WHY diversity of thinking is critical for success in senior roles. Neuorscience actually shows that diversity and inclusion enhance our collective brains’ ability to innovate because we are better positioned to perceive opportunities, and generate ideas about how to leverage those opportunities. 

Our speaker is Dr. Iris Firstenberg. She is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at UCLA and Adjunct Professor of Management at UCLA Anderson. She specializes in strategies for creative problem solving and innovative thinking. In addition to the MBA programs, Iris is one of the most highly rated instructors in many Anderson Executive programs.

Dr. Firstenberg also conducts seminars on creativity and innovation for a wide cross section of Fortune 500 organizations, including companies in aerospace, software, automotive, healthcare, entertainment, defense, telecommunications, energy, financial services, retail, and pharmaceuticals, as well as government agencies such as NASA. Dr. Firstenberg is the recipient of the 2002 UCLA Department of Psychology Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2011 UCLA Extension Distinguished Teaching Award.

You are invited to attend the Innovate@UCLA Young Tech Professionals (YTP) Tech Bootcamp Demo Day. Four teams from the bootcamp will showcase their projects to a panel of judges from the private sector, local governments and academia.

The Young Tech Professionals (YTP) program develops the next generation technology workforce by educating undergraduate and graduate students on business and technical skills that are necessary to succeed in the real world. Students engage in a 6-week hands-on bootcamp augmenting their academic curriculum with digital using the Google Design Thinking framework and core, professional skills, such as diversity and inclusion, project management, and communications. Students learn how to collaborate and work in diverse teams led by industry coaches who guide them through the process of ideating, validating and refining their solutions, to a final Minimal Viable Product (MVP), and finally present their solutions to industry judges during a pitch competition.