Anderson TED Thought Leaders Notes

My favorite event of my entire UCLA Anderson experience was the TED Thought Leaders week. This year was the first year in which UCLA Anderson partnered with TED to bring live viewings of the TED conference to campus as well as creating a local TED-style seminar night at Anderson itself. This featured 3 professors and 3 student speakers, and the reason it was so fun was that the entire student body got to see the amazing talent and unique ideas coming straight from their friends and teachers. I never felt more proud of Anderson than I did that night.

I spoke to other students, and many felt the same way. A blog post recapping the event showed many students' positive reactions, and a blog post from a fellow student and friend demonstrated the same thing. I really hope they do the event again in future years.

You can watch all the videos online and see for yourself. Below are some of my notes and takeaways.

David Kelley (official TED conference)

• Getting over phobias
  
• Process to get your feet wet
  
• Then have less phobias elsewhere
  
• Process to make analytical people be creative
  
• Boosts confidence
  

Jim Stengel (official TED conference and Anderson prof!)

• Brother was family physician
  
• Only cared for others
  
• Inspired Jim to leave P&G and teach brand ideals
  

Shlomo Benartzi (Anderson prof)

• Save more tomorrow
  
• Increase retirement savings contributions with pay raises
  
• Working in what he's passionate about
  

Guy Holzman (Anderson student, another version of the video on YouTube)

• Was corporate tax attorney paid by companies to screw people over
  
• Citizens for Just Taxation 
  
• Corporations pay 5X less taxes than individuals
  
• 3 tricks
  
• Donations
  
• Off-shoring
  
• Lobbying
  

Bhagwan Chowdhry (Anderson prof)

• Was in Entourage
  
• Half of people broke
  
• Half of births unregistered
  
• Financial Access at Birth
  
• $100 savings account per birth
  
• Register mom too
  
• Assign universal ID
  
• Mobile branchless payments 
  
• Only takes 1/50 of 1% of GDP
  

Stutigo Swamy (Anderson student)

• TFA
  
• Dream Act
  
• Entered under 18
  
• Finished high school
  
• Get taxes on their income
  

Rakesh Sarin (Anderson prof)

• Happiness is reality minus expectations
  
• Expectations shift, hedonic adaptation
  
• Crescendo effect, do less happy then more happy events in that order
  
• Reality is as we interpret it, focus on bigger mission not small tasks
  

Stephen Lehtonen (Anderson student)

• http://www.breakawayeducation.org/ 
  
• Loved to chew on book, teacher beat it out of him
  
• Kids don't learn at same rate, school system broken
• Need to find each kid's untapped passion, let them pursue it