UCLA: STARTING WEEK

Hello🤙🏼

Back in January 2021, SKEMA Business School started a partnership with UCLA Extension. This was a huge opportunity for me to fulfill my dreams to work in the #1 public university in the world, and live in Los Angeles.

Fifteen SKEMA students have been enrolled in UCLA Extension, and I am grateful to be one of them.

We started with a week of workshops on September 13th, and we were lucky enough to have those workshops taught by professionals.

First day, Berverly Macy, who is an educator, author, speaker, and thought-leader in marketing and branding, digital business transformation, and emerging technology innovation, including NFTs and enterprise blockchain. And she has worked for a looooot of people

Beverly was really dynamic, and we really loved her class.

The example she uses during her class were very entertaining and it allows us to understand deeply what she was teaching us.

She uses examples such as: Travis Scoot x Fornite ; movie trailers, famous brands marketing, and TikTok stars.

Beverly gives us many tips and tricks about how this whole world works, especially in digital marketing and concerning Hollywood. She was aware of all the latest trends, what works right now and what worked before but was completely down since covid.

Beverly taught us how to manage ourself, and we never had advices like that before, so we were really attentive. She also taught us many things about how trailers works, integrated marketing, and storytelling.

This was our first class of the week and we ended it with a big smile on our faces because we truly enjoyed it.

Nance Rosen, is the author of the book Speak Up! & Succeed: How to get everything you want in meetings, presentations and conversations.

Nance Rosen was a marketing executive at Coca-Cola Company, president of the Medical Marketing Association, first woman director of marketing in the Fortune 500 technology sector, host of International Business on public radio and NightCap on television, an entrepreneur and a general manager at Bozell Advertising and Public Relations (now Omnicom).

So, having her talking and giving really great and helpful advices to us was just amazing. We were very lucky to have her with us.

She is dynamic, and makes us think about ourself, to find who we really are in order to find what we want, what we “really really want”, if I dare to quote her.

She helps us to begin our personal branding by doing some entertaining exercices. At the end, we were all able to have our personal brand triad and this is something you always have to have in mind when you choose your path in life or when you are following your career. She makes us think and see though ourself to find what we are made of, in a really inspiring way. This was new for me, I have never had a class like this before and I will remember this moment and its outcome at any decisions of my work or personal life.

The three hours flies away, that was amazing to have her talking about her past experiences, all she has done by now, and all she is doing and will be doing in the future.

Nance is an inspiration, and she gives us all of her energy during this class. She is really inventive, smart, and really good at what she does.

If you’re looking for all those really great advices, she got a blog and I put you the link right here: NanceRosenBlog.com.

For two days, Vernon Mortensen, who started his career writing, producing, and directing indie films, introduce us to how studio works and how to manage to do contacts in real life.

Vernon worked as a development writer at Paramount Studios, and won some awards which is pretty impressive, even if he was very humble about him and what he has done by now.

Vernon makes us a Paramount tour, and explain to us a lot of tricks that the cinema industry uses.

The second day, he taught us the basic of TV and movie development, and it was pretty intense, nevertheless absolutely interesting.

He explains to us what was the “save the cat beat sheet”, introduce words in our language such as shard of glass, broken compass, rooting resume, wrong-way mission statement, actually, I learned lots of things that were totally unknown to me. I learn how movies and TV shows are made, and it is litterally two totally different worlds.

Then, Vernon finishes his session by teaching us how to make contacts, how to manage our career and our future, what traps we have to avoid and opportunities we can’t miss. He actually gives us real-life advices, and this is what I truly like in his lecture. This was real, advices we can use right now, right where we are, starting from scratch.

The whole class loved his classes, and we were really captivated by his guidance.

The last day but not least, Lia Haberman explains us everything about LA’s Marketing Landscape.

She is actually CMO at Fit Body App, and she is a digital media and marketing advisor for small-mid size businesses and entrepreneurs. She is also an adjunct instructor at UCLAx and that’s why we have had the pleasure to meet her.

What she taught us was really interesting, and little did we know as French people that the OOH (Out-Of-Home) marketing was that important in LA, especially in Sunset Blvd.

She opened my mind on marketing techniques that no one have ever taught me before. For people who want to work in digital marketing (and I am one of them), it was very informative.

At the end of the session, Lia was join by Melanie Travis on Zoom.

Melanie is the founder of Andie swimwear, a really chic swimwear brand who’s face of collection is no one else but Demi Moore and her daughters. Melanie explain to us how she manage to have Demi Moore in her campaign, and also her plan to put a giant billboard of Demi and her three daughters right on Sunset Blvd for a month, and how it makes people and medias discover the brand and so expend brand recognition. Wow that sentence was huge but I hope you understand what I wanted to say.

Anyway, this last day was amazing, the three hours flies away, and Lia was really entertaining. I loved that class.

After this week at UCLA Extension this is what I can tell you: I really and truly love it !

Our intervenants were really passionate about their work, and makes us really motivate to start our career. They all are real hard-workers and that’s what I loved about all the motivation they throw at our fresh frenchies faces.

The courses taught until now were truly interesting. I loved everyone of them. So that’s a very very good point, well done UCLAx.

I also love the campus. It is huge, beautiful, and got an amazing library that I can’t wait to go in.

For Los Angeles in general, I have been there three times before, and I love everything about this city.

I love the vibe, the environment: having the ocean on one side, the city, and then the mountains on the other side makes me peaceful and happy ; the energy, the people, the food: because when you are vegan, LA is the dream city for you ; culture, how work is done, literally everything!

I hope you enjoy this little article, I really wanted to share this first week with you because I am more than grateful to be here.

See you for another UCLA article throughout the quarter,

Anthéa G.