Co-Hosted by Innovate@UCLA, the bi-annual Southern California CIO Executive Summit is ready to take the stage virtually on June 22nd from 8AM-3PM PST.

Join your CIO/CTO Peers for a great day of learning and collaboration. This SoCal CIO/CTO Virtual Summit is complimentary and will feature great topics on top IT issues facing enterprise companies and leaders. Some companies who are currently registered:

Mazda, Yamaha, AEG, Molina, Mattel, Sony, City Nation Bank, Technicolor, Avery Dennison, Lionsgate, Skechers, Disney Television, City of Los Angeles, Golden State Foods, Epson, and more!

Agenda Topics:

• Driving an Agenda that Enables and Transforms Your Business
• Fueled by the Power of Data or Enabling Work from Anywhere with 5G
• The CIO Mission – Directly Aligning IT to Business Objectives
• Work from Anywhere and the Evolution of Culture and Talent
• The Intentional Infrastructure – Cloud Clarity for Greater Outcomes
• Strategic Drivers to Digital Business Acceleration

Innovate@UCLA will be the host for the Networking Session from 12:45PM-1:15PM PST. Please make sure to join us, meet the speakers, the Executive Board and network with our community!!!

View the detailed agenda and learn about the speakers here.

Heather Caruso will engage you in a conversation on the future of leadership.  What changes are coming?  Will organizational designs be different/ more matrixed in the future?  What communication skills are needed to bridge different cultures or roles? How can leaders foster effective collaboration, especially for cross-functional and multicultural teams? What does it take to ensure that you provide your team with the right opportunities to grow, inspire and work together?

Biography

Heather Caruso joined UCLA Anderson in 2018 as assistant dean for equity, diversity and inclusion. A scholar and researcher of organizational behavior, she teaches in the Management and Organizations and Behavioral Decision Making areas.

Caruso’s passion for facilitating collaborative success runs deep in her life and work. “My formal interests in organizational and social psychology developed when I was an undergraduate at Stanford doing cross-cultural negotiation research with Jared Curhan and Lee Ross,” she says. These interests deepened during her years as an engineer and executive in a multinational Silicon Valley startup. “I was fascinated with the real-world experiences stemming from differences in cultural identity. Interpersonal problems could derail even the most talented individual performers, and effective collaboration skills could not only prevent such problems, but raise individual contributions to new heights.”

Layering rigorous academic training on top of practical experience, Caruso grounds her interests in the areas of: effective collaboration (especially for cross-functional and multicultural teams); skilled improvisation in leadership; management of identity, power and influence; and strategies for optimal choice, judgment and decision making. She focused on these topics in over a decade of teaching, research administration and scholarship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and has moved to UCLA Anderson to enrich and expand her work.

“Propelled by our outstanding research in these areas, we are connecting to pioneers and pathbreakers, building bridges between research and practice to best accelerate innovation in the digital age.”

Caruso stays connected to the everyday priorities and challenges of the workplace by consulting for private- and public-sector organization leaders across the globe, as well as by teaching classes in leadership, team dynamics and power and influence. In addition, Caruso partnered with Chicago’s Second City to co-found the Second Science Project, which offers skill-building leadership workshops at the intersection of robust behavioral research and professional improvisational practice.

Caruso is a strong proponent of lifelong learning for management excellence, and encourages students to make the most of their professors’ knowledge, not only while they are pursuing their degrees, but also throughout their careers. “As a preeminent public university, UCLA has a a distinctive opportunity to advance equity, diversity and inclusion,” she says. “It is an honor to help UCLA Anderson seize that opportunity by creating the kind of challenging and rewarding educational climate that can benefit leaders from every walk of life.”