Mark your calendars to join the Lunch & Learn Series at WIT Sony Pictures in collaboration with Hercode, WAVE and Innovate@UCLA. Our featured speaker is Heidi Pease, a UCLA Anderson Alum, Innovate@UCLA Executive Board Member and a well known expert in the Blockchain and NFT space.

On behalf of Innovate@UCLA, we invite you to attend Evanta’s Southern California CIO Inner Circle in-person dinner, taking place on Tuesday, November 9^th at 4 PM at Il Cielo Restaurant in Beverly Hills.  

You will be joined by C-Suite attendees representing Enterprise Organizations ($250M+ revenue),  Government, Education, and Nonprofit Organizations, agencies, or organizations with more than 1,000 employees, and Service Provider organizations ($250M+ revenue).  

Registered attendees include CIO’s and CTO’s from Sempra, UTA, CGI, Fremantle, Houlihan Lokey, NASA/JPL, City National Bank, Molina, Aristocrat, Golden State Foods, AWS, Red Bull, Epson, Yamaha, Sony, Lionsgate and more. 

Note, to qualify to attend, you must represent one of the three categories listed above. All guests must provide proof of full vaccination before entering the restaurant.  

We look forward to you joining us for dinner, engaging conversation, and networking with other IT leaders.

*Statement from Gartner’s Corporate Office* 

Due to the increase of the Delta variant in the US, and in accordance with CDC guidance, we recommend that our community do their part to stop the spread of the virus by only attending if they have been fully vaccinated.

The Innovate@UCLA Executive Leadership Award (ELA) recognizes the exceptional creation of value to achieve a company’s vision via application of innovative, forward thinking and disruptive technologies and operating models.  The award is given to a CEO/Founder and CIO/CTO (or top Technology Executive) who has led and promoted the use of digital technology and expertise as a critical component of the company’s decisions, fueling improvements in brand and bottom line. 

This year, the primary focus is on organizations that have excelled in the face of adversity, illustrating the power of innovation in times of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Event Agenda:

• Opening Remarks – Bill Martin, CIO at AEG
• Host Welcome – Thomas Phelps, SVP of Corporate Strategy & CIO at Laserfiche & Heidi Pease, Co-Founder of LA Blockchain Lab
• Dean’s Remarks – Tony Bernardo, UCLA Anderson School of Management
• Committee Chair’s Remarks – Andy Schlei, SVP of IT at Sony Pictures
• Welcome Remarks – Jim Davis, Vice Provost IT at UCLA & Jim Rinaldi, Innovate@UCLA Executive Director
• Sponsor Introduction – Charles Sims, CTO at United Talent Agency & Jim Rinaldi
• Avasant Presentation – Kevin Parikh, CEO
• Keynote Presentations:
  • Lt General Larry James, Interim Director at JPL
  • Joyce Chang, Chair of Global Research at JP Morgan
• Emerging Tech Award Acceptance – Jiajun Zhu, Co-Founder & CEO at Nuro & Dave Ferguson, Co-Founder & President at Nuro
• Public Sector Award Acceptance – Chief Brian Fennessy at Orange County Fire Authority
• Community Impact Award Acceptance – Amanda Renteria, CEO at Code for America
• Q&A with Frank Mottek and all honorees
• Closing Remarks – Thomas Phelps

To register for this event, click here

You are invited to attend the Innovate@UCLA Young Tech Professionals (YTP) Tech Bootcamp Demo Day. Student 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.

Co-Hosted by Innovate@UCLA, the bi-annual Southern California CIO Executive Summit is ready to take the stage in-person on Wednesday, December 15th from 8AM-4:30PM PST.

Join your CIO/CTO peers from the organizations below for a great day of learning and collaboration:

Sony Pictures, Disney, Molina, Lionsgate, NASA/JPL, Beachbody, City National Bank, Zenith Insurance, Mars Petcare, GE Digital, Monster Energy, Nestle, AMN Healthcare, UCLA, Sempra, CGI, AWS, Red Bull, Yamaha, Fremantle, LA Clippers, Skechers, Jack n Box, AEG, Teradata, Qualcomm, Technicolor, Fox, MGM, Mattel, KB Home, Thermo Fisher, MARS Petcare, Epson, Warner Bros. and many more…

Speakers include:

• Rhonda Vetere, CIO Herbalife
• Glenn Coles, CIO Yamaha
• Chris Coye, CIO Skechers
• Randi Levin, CIO NASA/JPL and Chris Mattmann, CTO NASA/JPL
• Allen Fazio, CIO Houilhan Lokey
• Mike Anderson, Chief Digital and Information Officer Netskope

Topics include:

• Empowering the Workforce with Technology
• Leading Through Change
• Building A Customer-Centric Culture
• The Three Keys To Cybersecurity Transformation — Platform, People, and Process
• Beyond the Hype — Embracing the Hybrid Cloud
• The Key to Becoming a Data-Driven Organization
• An ERP Journey
• And more…..

Please make sure to stop by the Innovate@UCLA booth in the networking/reception area!

View the detailed agenda and learn about the speakers here.

Innovate@UCLA invites you to join us on Thursday, January 27^th at 12:00 PM PST for an interactive, on-camera session with Ernst and Young’s 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year, Anderee Berengian. He will take us through creating digital startups and how enterprises can model a similar approach.

Anderee will explore key topics like:

• How enterprises can leverage the scientific method for innovation
• The importance of customer signals
• Lessons learned from enterprise businesses leveraging start-up digital approaches with practical take away applications    

Featured Speaker:

Hosted by Innovate@UCLA’s Women in Technology Taskforce, the series is open to all Innovate@UCLA members. These intimate forums will highlight the industry’s most inspiring female leaders, with the goal of creating valuable connections, supporting leadership development, and building a community of like-minded women.

The interactive session with live Q&A will delve into the speaker’s personal stories of the challenges women face in balancing life, career advancement, and leadership development, as well as their strategies for success in overcoming obstacles that arose as they climbed the ladder.

We look forward to you joining us.

Leslie’s is a unique pool supplies company in its category, but it faces the same landscape as does traditional retail.  Under the same competitive pressures from the likes of big box retailers such as Walmart, Home Depot and eCommerce juggernaut Amazon; Leslie’s needed to establish itself as a digital contender – from the ground up.   

Join Kyle Pretsch, a Leslie’s intrapreneur who drove new innovations in digital that evolved this traditional retailer to an omnichannel force within the sector.  Kyle will share the digital team’s journey from the initial MVP to scaling operations and lessons learned along the way. This may be the story of a billion-dollar retailer but within it hear the story of how a homemade tech team is fast-becoming an industry titan, daily and how technology in-part led Leslie’s Poolmart from a private equity endeavor to the IPO of Leslie’s, Inc.

Join us in person for Avasant and Tech Mahindra’s Visionaries Los Angeles Event, “Digitalizing the Enterprise: End-to-End Transformation from Supply Chain to CX.” This event will take place at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes on Wednesday, March 9^th from 3:30 PM – 6:00 PM PST.

Connect with fellow IT and Business leaders representing Fortune 1000 enterprises through an evening of meaningful connections, on-the-spot engagement and inspiring thought leadership, around key topics:

• Sustainable, scalable cloud options to enable digital transformation 
• Supply chain and digital transformation trends that cut across all sectors 
• Dealing with the talent shortage 
• Taking a holistic approach to the digital transformation and the value chain 

How are women leveraging entrepreneurship to succeed today?

Back by popular demand, Innovate@UCLA’s Women in Technology Taskforce invites you to session two of the “How She Built This” series, taking place virtually on Thursday, March 17th at 12:00 PM PST. The session will feature thought leaders from Conde Group, Komae & Zavikon and more.

The interactive session with live Q&A will take a look at women who have used their talents and skills as entrepreneurs to rise to the top of their fields and achieve their visions for success. Delve into the speakers’ personal stories of the challenges women face in balancing life, career advancement, and leadership development, as well as their strategies for success in overcoming obstacles along the way.

We look forward to you joining us.

Innovate@UCLA invites you to our first in-person CxO Exchange of the year!

Join us for engaging networking, a fireside chat conversation with Innovate@UCLA executives, and a buffet dinner at the luxurious Luskin Conference Center and Hotel at the heart of the UCLA campus.

The evening will explore “Cloud Economics, Benefits & Budgeting,” where our speakers Andy Schlei, Senior Vice President, Information Technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Kevin Gray, Chief Information Officer at City of Burbank, will cover key topics and themes:

• How do enterprises ensure that infrastructure and financing decisions are aligned?
• What should enterprises keep in mind when dividing responsibilities between the organization and vendors to optimize the cloud environment, security, and compliance?
• How does the organization ensure efficient and sensible spending?

We hope you can join us on Thursday, March 31^st at 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM at the UCLA campus as we discuss transforming your business through cloud.

Thank You to Our Event Partner

With the accelerated pace of change and disruption we’ve seen over the past 24 months, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence has become a critical game-changer for the enterprise. Enterprises look to maximize business value and drive velocity through the conversion of data and analytics into an integral part of their business and increasingly, in an automated way. Across all industries, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence will drive innovation through the use of complex combinations of data from across lines of business, breaking down barriers, speeding up velocity and intelligently assisting with decision making. Increasingly complex decisions require companies to adapt their decision-making processes and implement context-driven and domain relevant analytics. Our Spring Summit will explore these topics and share insights through a series of speakers and a panel discussion.  

Hosted by Innovate@UCLA’s Women in Technology Taskforce, the series is open to all Innovate@UCLA women members. These intimate forums will highlight the industry’s most inspiring female leaders, with the goal of creating valuable connections, supporting leadership development, and building a community of like-minded women.

The interactive session with live Q&A will delve into the speaker’s personal stories of the challenges women face in balancing life, career advancement, and leadership development, as well as their strategies for success in overcoming obstacles that arose as they climbed the ladder.

We look forward to you joining us.