Drive Time

Drive Time

By UCLA AndersonBusiness
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Drive Time episodes

  • FEMBA Helped a Commercial Construction Pro Achieve Team Focus

    Alex Rayis (’26)

    Senior VDC Manager, Gilbane Building Company
    Host: Salo Steinvortz (’26)
    Marketing Manager | Product, Brand Strategy and Customer Insights | Father

    Alex Rayis (’26) once took a 2-week college hiatus to tour as a DJ. He would close the bars at 3:00 a.m. after his gig, then show up to work at his construction job. Originally from Ohio, Alex studied architectural engineering at the University of Cincinnati and, outside of school and work, he’s always DJ-ed and produced music. But he’s also spent the last decade as senior manager at Gilbane Building Company, building his career in commercial construction. Most recently, he completed UCLA Anderson’s fully employed MBA.
    Alex says he had to step up his game academically when he started graduate school, and Anderson faculty, advisors and curriculum helped him do it. He also shifted his priority from high expectations of individual achievement to a new focus on how teams function and succeed. He has worked on projects all over the country and now leads teams across the West Coast, focusing on how technology and people come together to deliver better projects. Anderson helped him finesse his new personal mission to “work with really cool people on really cool things learning really cool stuff.” His FEMBA capstone project moved him firmly in that direction when his team pivoted to create a product that helped homeowners affected by the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.
    FEMBA classmate Salo Steinvortz (’26) bonded early in the program with Alex, grateful for his friendship and impeccable note-taking in class — along with what Salo described in conversation as “very nice handwriting, too.

    39 min
  • A Master Distiller Crafts his MBA

    Featuring:

    Bill Auxier ('26)
    Master Distiller | Serial Entrepreneur
    Host: Salo Steinvortz (’26)
    Marketing Manager | Product, Brand Strategy and Customer Insights | Father

    What happens when a chemical engineer walks into a nuclear power plant, looks around at the mountains of paperwork, and thinks, “Absolutely not”?

    UCLA Anderson FEMBA graduate Bill Auxier (’26) followed his instincts to leave one of the most regulated industries imaginable for one of the most personally hands-on: craft spirits.
    It’s a dream and a plan he’s had since 2012. “I had a nuclear engineering internship my junior year of undergrad and I just hated that it was 99% paperwork,” Bill said in conversation with classmate Salo Steinvortz. “I wanted more excitement, more hands-on work that you could actually see the results of. I found that in the beverage startup world.”
    More than a decade later — after gaining experience in several distilleries, holding a seat on the board of the California Artisanal Distillers Guild, earning the title of master distiller and — Bill has established his own distillery, Sunset Spirits.
    He did it while completing Anderson’s fully employed MBA program, where he was also a recipient of the Cockrum Fellowship, which recognizes leadership, academic excellence and impact. He chose Anderson FEMBA in order to apply classroom learning as well as workplace cultural lessons on the job the very next day — and to execute with confidence the business plan he had written so many years earlier. For Bill, as Salo observed, “learning, creating and building all come at once.”

    41 min
  • Design Your Life

    Featuring:

    Frankie Coelho (’26)
    VP of Inclusive Excellence, FEMBA Council | VPG Strategist
    Host: Salo Steinvortz (’26)
    Marketing Manager | Product, Brand Strategy and Customer Insights | Father

    Frankie Coelho is an intrapreneur and entrepreneur focused on inclusive leadership, innovation and the future of food and beverage. As a UCLA Anderson Fully Employed MBA student, they served as vice president of inclusive excellence on Anderson’s FEMBA Council, working to foster belonging, leadership development and community impact.

    Frankie is especially passionate about the CPG space, with a strong interest in strategy, people development, and food and beverage innovation. Their long-term dream is to open a restaurant rooted in their culture and dedicated to their ancestors, a vision they have already begun bringing to life through recipe development and creative exploration in the kitchen.
    As classmate Salo Steinvortz found out in conversation with Frankie, UCLA Anderson didn’t just give Frankie a degree. It gave them the confidence to finally be themself. Frankie told Salo their story of being an immigrant from Bahrain by way of Goa, India, and becoming an accidental entrepreneur who went on a hike, asked the universe for a sign, and came back with a vision worth building.

    34 min
  • From Cage to Classroom, MMA to MBA

    Featuring: Logan Wood (’26)

    Senior Product Manager, InMarket
    Host: Salo Steinvortz (’26)
    Marketing Manager | Product, Brand Strategy and Customer Insights | Father

    Logan Wood (’26) is a senior product manager at InMarket. His entire career has been in tech so far, starting off in data analytics and engineering, then moving into product.

    But, he told UCLA Anderson fully employed MBA classmate Salo Steinvortz (’26), “I’m also an MMA fighter, which kind of shaped my mindset around my career and was also a catalyst for applying to business school.”
    Working full-time, training twice a day and going to business school at night required he “level up” in ways he never imagined. “You have to be very humble, you can’t have an ego, and the only way to get better is really just to keep showing up, keep putting the grind in.” While Logan was a student, he traveled to Thailand for his first professional Muay Thai fight. “The person before Anderson would not recognize the person now,” he said.
    Logan attributes his recent promotion and career progression to what he’s learned in Anderson classrooms to apply professionally. He chose Anderson’s Business Creation Capstone option to gain perspective on entrepreneurship. “They always say product people are entrepreneurs who haven’t started their own company yet,” he said. “I never knew how true that was until I came [to Anderson]. My definite end goal is, one day, I absolutely know I want to start a company. Being here has totally shaped my future ambitions.”

    40 min
  • My Journey from Google to LA28

    Share Success: Incredible. Get your tissues because there SO much love in Barbara’s story: following her heart with Google from Brazil to LA, going through FEMBA (secretly!?!) with her husband Victor, falling in love with LA, taking the leap of faith to leave the juggernaut of Google to fly into the world of LA28 after an Anderson class that changed her life. Barbara’s story is 100% a telling of what makes America a destination for talent from around the world. We are lucky to have her (and Victor...!)...and their doggy!

    Featuring: Barbara Alves ('26) with Salo Steinvortz ('26)

     

    More episodes here anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/fully-employed-mba/culture/femba-drive-time-podcast

    59 min
  • Career vs. Calling with an ex-Amazon Leader

    Think Fearlessly: Wow. Seriously. I’ve listened to this episode three times, and my IQ goes up 5 points with each listen. Jonathan and Becky cover SO much of an amazing journey: a lifetime healthcare arc from loving his father to serving over 1.5M employees at Amazon; a history lesson in US Healthcare; favorite faculty (Kramer, Shaddy, Fox), and more. In a school full of unicorns, Jonathan and Becky are unicorns’ unicorns, and they are in your alumni network.

    Featuring: Jonathan Liu MD FACP ('26), with Becky Wai ('26)

     

    More episodes here anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/fully-employed-mba/culture/femba-drive-time-podcast

    59 min
  • Scaling Systems Across Borders

    Drive Change: Five years later. Leading after Anderson. Building the classroom experience of Anderson for the next 20 years. And running Tenacity Artistic Productions and fulfilling his childhood dreams of Storytelling to make the world work for everyone. From earning a JD, to earning an MBA, to being an entrepreneur on two continents, Perry is an inspiration in your network.

    Featuring: Perry Poussard Esq. ('21)

     

    More episodes here anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/fully-employed-mba/culture/femba-drive-time-podcast

    1 hr 4 min
  • Anderson Prepared Me: Anika Sharin (’20), Sr. Partnership Dev. Program Mgmt, Sight Sciences Inc.

    Anika Sharin (’20) has commuted from the Bay Area to L.A. for three years because she chose UCLA Anderson over UC Berkeley. She keeps her base up north because she was hired by fellow alumnus Paul Badawi (’00), who founded the Silicon Valley-based company Sight Sciences. “The way we talk about sharing success at Anderson,” says Sharin, “he is really doing that.” Now, as she prepares to graduate, Sharin reflects on her Anderson SuperSaturday admission interview experience, launching her own health care startup, being a powerful woman in tech and FEMBA puppies (of course).

    Featuring: Anika Sharin (’20), Senior Partnership Development Program Management, Sight Sciences Inc.

     

    Hosted by Dylan Stafford, assistant dean and director of admissions of UCLA Anderson's Fully Employed MBA program (FEMBA), the Drive Time podcast features interviews with FEMBA alumni, current students, faculty and administrators who discuss leadership, work-life balance, entrepreneurship, career development and more.

    More episodes here anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/fully-employed-mba/culture/femba-drive-time-podcast

    59 min
  • I Love My Bruins: Steve Yu (B.A. ’95, ’03), Assistant Dean and CFO, UCLA Law

    Even the assistant dean and CFO of the UCLA School of Law had to overcome his fear of public speaking. Double Bruin and alumni board member Steve Yu is an active mentor and tireless advocate of higher education, yet he says doing the dishes is crucial to staying productive. The winner of the UCLA alumni network’s 2017 Volunteer of the Year Award proves he’s just like us.

     

    Hosted by Dylan Stafford, assistant dean and director of admissions of UCLA Anderson's Fully Employed MBA program (FEMBA), the Drive Time podcast features interviews with FEMBA alumni, current students, faculty and administrators who discuss leadership, work-life balance, entrepreneurship, career development and more.

    More episodes here: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/fully-employed-mba/admissions/assistant-deans-advice/drive-time-podcasts

    53 min
  • Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan: Brent Pressentin (’15), Partner Advisor, AdvicePeriod

    Get to know Brent Pressentin and, 30 minutes later, you might be managing your money better than you were before. Despite the peripatetic nature of his early career, the self-described Cheese Head says, “Planning is a consistent theme in my life,” something he learned to value at 23 working for E&J Gallo. Post-college, he test-drove the carbon-fiber Trek bike Lance Armstrong rode in his fifth Tour de France, got his feet wet in internet security and chased the girl of his dreams to Washington, D.C. But He found his “why” in wealth management when he earned his MBA from UCLA Anderson — which he is not above rubbing in his siblings’ faces.

     

    Hosted by Dylan Stafford, assistant dean and director of admissions of UCLA Anderson's Fully Employed MBA program (FEMBA), the Drive Time podcast features interviews with FEMBA alumni, current students, faculty and administrators who discuss leadership, work-life balance, entrepreneurship, career development and more.

    FEMBA Drive Time post-production by Samantha Hollon (’20)

    More episodes here: anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/fully-employed-mba/culture/femba-drive-time-podcast

    1 hr 4 min

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