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Tyson Avery Dean's Speaker Series

kmcnally — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 23:02:56 +0000

Tyson Avery Dean's Speaker Series kmcnally Wed, 01/09/2019 - 15:02 More Blog Posts January 09, 2019 Riverside, Ca

Tyson M. Avery Speaks on Campus for the Dean’s Speaker Series

“You will determine the success of your endeavors not only by your strategy and execution, but by how you conduct yourself."

Watch his talk here

Mr. Avery spoke on campus to a large audience of business students and faculty. From his experience serving as a judge in the Iraq war for the high profile case at Abu Ghraib, he shared how ethical leadership could have prevented the greatest scandal of the Iraq war and the lessons and consequences of the failure of ethical leadership that apply in the business world.

“You will determine the success of your endeavors not only by your strategy and execution, but by how you conduct yourself.” He compared how acting ethically or not in the Military or in the business world has the same results. “There are the same consequences to the top and bottom line for companies who act ethically.”

Tyson M. Avery is Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer for CBRE, Inc. In this position, Mr. Avery is the senior executive responsible to the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors for the global ethics and compliance program, which includes both domestic and international responsibilities.

Prior to his corporate experience, Mr. Avery spent ten years as an officer and judge advocate serving in the U.S. Marine Corps where he held positions of increasing responsibility, including prosecuting and defending felony level criminal cases, serving as one of the first Geneva Convention Magistrates in Iraq, and serving the President of the United States as the sole military attorney in the White House Counsel's Office.

“Start with your own established set of values and be guided by them,” Mr. Avery stated. “When it comes to values and ethics, you must sweat the small stuff so they don’t become greater.”

In 2004, the American Bar Association named Tyson the Young Military Lawyer of the Year. He was also awarded the Bronze Star for his service during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. Mr. Avery holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of California, Riverside and a J.D. from the University of Kansas.

The Dean’s Speaker Series brings successful leaders in the business community to share their expertise. Designed to foster critical discussions about business issues, it also provides networking opportunities between corporate executives and business students. Dean’s speakers have achieved national and international prominence in their respective fields and represent a diversity of cultural, political and economic perspectives.

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Candace Wiest Advises Students: "Invest in You"

kmcnally — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 22:41:53 +0000

Candace Wiest Advises Students: "Invest in You" kmcnally Wed, 01/09/2019 - 14:41 More Blog Posts January 09, 2019 Riverside, Ca

Invest In You

Candace Wiest at the Dean's Speaker Series

See the event in pictures

Due to popular demand, the UCR School of Business Dean’s Speaker Series moved downtown to the Fox Performing Arts Center, Riverside, California. Candace Wiest, a 20-year CEO banking executive, spoke to a packed audience of students, faculty, and community members.

Candace Hunter Wiest is the president & CEO of West Valley Bancorp Inc., and West Valley National Bank, the West Valley’s only locally owned and operated community bank. Ms. Wiest was recruited to organize the Bank in March of 2006. It opened its doors on December 22, 2006 with $14,000,000 in start-up capital raised locally, and survived the recession under her leadership. Wiest’s career path has been unconventional. After spending time in the hospitality and insurance industries, she joined her first bank in 1986 as a loan clerk. In June of 2013, Wiest celebrated her 20th anniversary as a bank CEO. Formerly, Wiest was the President of Inland Empire National Bank in Riverside, California, and served twice as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She is the first woman to be elected as a Class A Director in the Bank’s 100 year history. Wiest believes that community commitment is the cornerstone of community banking, and she serves as a member and director of several organizations.

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Dean's Speaker Series with Mark Rampolla

kmcnally — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 22:20:27 +0000

Dean's Speaker Series with Mark Rampolla kmcnally Wed, 01/09/2019 - 14:20 More Blog Posts January 09, 2019 Riverside, Ca

Nine Life Lessons from Mark Rampolla

Dean's Speaker Series Live at the Fox Performing Arts Theater

“Reach higher to build great businesses, not settling only for profit maximization,” said Mark Rampolla to a full house at the Fox Performing Arts Center, Riverside, California, as part of the UCR School of Business Dean’s Speaker Series, February 9, 2017. Mark Rampolla is the founder and former CEO of ZICO Coconut Water, a $1 Billion brand. Rampolla raised capital from friends, family, and angel investors, and launched in New York in the summer of 2004. From selling out of his van to yoga studios, he built the $1 billion brand that ZICO is today.

Rampolla told his personal journey to a record-setting crowd at the Fox, and finished his talk with nine life lessons that have helped him get where he is today. He encouraged everyone in attendance to reach higher not just in business but in life.

“Build a great life,” Rampolla encouraged and challenged. “It’s not like any of us are getting out alive. ”

9 Life Lessons

1. Have a plan. Not a business plan but a “Life Plan.” What do you want to do with your life? What are your goals? What do I want to accomplish? What fun do I want to have? Who do you want to be?

2. Practice “purposelessness.” There’s a time and place for planning and organization. But one of the skills we don’t teach or learn is purposelessness. Time for thought. Time for nothing. It helps to take vacations. It helps to take weekends, nights off, detach from your phone every once in a while.

3. Know and love yourself. The greatest business people in the world know and love themselves. They know their weaknesses and strengths. Love yourself but at the same time tame the “ego.” I don’t know of a more dangerous thing in business than ego.

4. Take a risk. Easy to say, we all know it. But I can’t tell you how important it has been in my life to take a risk. Join the Peace Corps, apply to grad school, even get married, raise kids.

5. Have a Plan B. Take a risk but have a Plan B. Like most of these lessons there is a balance, a ying and yang. Your Plan B should be as thought out as your Plan A.

6. Show up and work hard. There’s no substitute for hard work. It sounds cliché, but there is no substitute for showing up alert and ready to work. You are present. Good life advice, good spiritual advice, but critically important business advice. It is only when you bring all of you, that you are ready to succeed. And it’s a great way to live a life. Because now is all we have. There is nothing but the present. There is no future, there is no past. There is only now.

7. Take thought time. It will take some time to learn but worth the investment. Eventually, you will do your best work during that time.

8. Commit to something. People are so hung up on that perfect ob, perfect career. Don’t worry about perfection, just find something to be passionate about.

9. Relax and enjoy the ride. There is a tendency to get so committed that we tend to take ourselves too seriously. And forget that it’s not like you’re going to get out alive.

ABOUT MARK RAMPOLLA

Mark Rampolla is the co-founder and managing partner at Powerplant Ventures. He is also the founder and CEO of ZICO Coconut Water. Rampolla raised capital from friends, family and angels and launched in New York in the summer of 2004. From selling out of his van to yoga studios, he built the $1 billion brand that ZICO is today. Rampolla started off as an executive in the Latin American & Caribbean divisions of International Paper, where he says that getting experience as an ‘intrapreneur’ prepared him to become an ‘entrepreneur’. “If you can find an opportunity that no one else wants,” he said, “you have an excellent environment to prepare yourself for bigger challenges.” He is a graduate of Marquette and Duke.

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Fireside Chat with Paran Johar '93

kmcnally — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 21:25:23 +0000

Fireside Chat with Paran Johar '93 kmcnally Wed, 01/09/2019 - 13:25 More Blog Posts January 09, 2019 Riverside, Ca

Fireside Chat with Paran Johar '93

Global marketing powerhouse returns to his alma mater to speak about business and marketing in an era of advanced technology.

See the event in pictures

Guest speaker Paran Johar ‘93 held a packed auditorium captive during the Fireside Chat at the University of California Riverside, School of Business.

You had a few choices for college, why did you choose UC Riverside?

I got into UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, and others. I chose UCR because it provided me with the broadest curriculum and framework in my education, which helped me determine what I was passionate about and what I wanted to do.

What was impactful during your experience at UCR?

I was not your typical student. I was paying for a lot of college myself. I worked 40 to 50 hours a week on average. I would take my exams on extended lunch breaks. But it was great for understanding business, learning how to pay bills, and getting experience in socialization. I took accounting and hated it; economics - hated it. But marketing, I just knew it was part of me. If I were to give advice to an incoming freshman - the biggest advice I can give people is to go with your gut and listen to your instinct.

How early in your career did you find your passion?

When I graduated, I got offers from different companies. But I went to dinner with an alum and brought my resume. The next day he called me up saying, “There is this advertising job, but they pay 19K a year, and no overtime.” I went to interview and when I walked through the doors it was like the heavens had opened up. I found where I wanted to work. It paid less than all other offers but I went with my gut and that opportunity evolved and evolved. With jobs, find what you are really excited about, passionate about, and the money will come.

After experiencing several marketing jobs, what led you to start your own company?

I was a CMO speaking around the world. I would go to these shows and they were just really bad; bad speakers, bad location, bad food. And it was all one-sided, salespeople trying to sell each other stuff. So I created a conference that brought large scale brands, Fortune 100 brands, CEOs, and leading tech providers together. It was not meant to be a business. It was meant to just bring together my network of friends from the ad and tech industry. And all of a sudden it became a business, I started making money, and someone wanted to buy the company. Now Modern Marketing Summit is the largest marketing conference around the world.

What has made your model different?

I realized quickly that you shouldn’t charge big brands to come to a conference. Our model was to have brands and agencies attend for free and everybody else pays. That way, if you wanted to sell something to Facebook, NBC, and all of these brands that were coming, you would have more opportunities, because our conferences were around 77% big brand names. What also drives our shows is content, and content comes from speakers. We believed in no commercials, but we integrated sponsors organically into the content. And we didn’t have them in stale locations. We held them in old churches and in nightclubs. We had food trucks, DJ’s, and musicians. We mixed it up and made it fun.

What are some of the biggest challenges running your own company?

We were not venture backed but we were profitable from day one. I think too many people ignore the fundamentals: business profit, loss, revenue, staffing, and business metrics. In today’s economy especially, they forget that they have to make money and have a business model. Focusing on core business components, listening to your audience, and keeping it simple is important. We got rid of all of the noise and tried to stay simple and focus on the core value of our conference: bringing together big brand leaders. There has been exponential growth in media usage.

What are the most effective ways for marketers to harness that growth?

When I was starting out, this thing called “mobile” happened, and I saw it as the second coming of the internet. Now mobile is touching all aspects of the marketing mix. I knew we had to look at mobile first -- from experience, from utility, from the entire business. In a world where 50% of the audience is mobile first, I’m constantly thinking how I can provide the utility that the consumer wants.

What should marketers focus on to build a bigger audience?

Right now, the idea is technology enablement through programmatic media. That takes into account things like data, location, and efficiency. That was
a big theme of 2015. The big theme of 2016 is storytelling which is part context and content. Context is all the technology, and content is the message.
If you’ve got a bad ad, even with all the technology in the world, people will ignore it. If you have an amazing ad, but it’s targeted to the wrong audience, people will ignore it. What we’re seeing is the blending of art and science. The technology companies are enabling the science, and the art is coming from the agencies that are evolving how they create their messaging.

When you are hiring, what are you looking for?

I always look at where someone has worked. Find companies in the area you are passionate about. It doesn’t matter what position you are in. Get involved
in those big brand companies in the areas that are innovative and known in the industry. Do whatever you can to get your foot in there. Network like
crazy. Go to as many events as you can. Get out of your comfort zone and meet people.

What is the single most important characteristic that has made you successful? The secret to your success?

Passion! I don’t even have to think about the answer. The one characteristic that has helped me throughout my career is passion. I have passion for what
I do. Have passion for what you do every day and you will be successful and more importantly, happy.

ABOUT PARAN JOHAR

Paran Johar is the founder of the Modern Marketing Summit - the largest marketing conference in the world - and the Global CEO of ad:tech and iMedia. Originally from India, he immigrated to Montreal, Canada at the age of 12 and went to high school in Los Angeles. After completing his BS in Marketing at the UC Riverside School of Business, he pursued a career in advertising & marketing that led him to launch The Modern Marketing Summit in 2009 - a mobile advertising and media company that hosts global events that bring together the world’s leading brands to network and learn about the latest media and technology.

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