Expand Your Business Knowledge and Acumen

Meher Gaurav is the HR and Business Consultant at EVENTZFORCE. She is a human resources executive with 15 years of experience with a passion for building HR infrastructure through technology, compliance, and people, especially with early stage ventures and startups. She attended UCLA PGPX in 2018 and shares her thoughts about her experience through the program.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE UCLA PGPX?

I chose UCLA for many reasons. After having a little over a 12 year long career, I embraced motherhood and took a sabbatical to focus on my child. During that time I also realized that I had jumped into the workforce a decade ago and never had the time to focus on my education. So I decided to ensure that I was relevant and up-to-date to be a modern day career oriented professional. While I looked out for potential opportunities to forward my career, I also spoke with several professionals and realized that I needed to do a great executive education program. And UCLA‘s PGPX fit all the criteria. My sister-in-law was a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA. Learning the values of her university and knowing UCLA’s association with several ISB professors further strengthened my resolve.

HOW HAS UCLA PGPX HELPED YOU?

For the first half of my career, my professional journey revolved around core human resource management. The second half was focused more on helping organizations find success through better employee relations and rolling labour laws to keep the organization legally compliant. One place where I struggled during my career was to understand and manage the tactical side of business implementation. UCLA PGPX has been incredibly insightful, not only to help me understand where and how I could’ve been more effective in the past, but also to discover so many different opportunities that I see today in areas of operations management, entrepreneurship, supply chain, and marketing. This helped me connect the dots to the bigger picture and realize my strengths beyond the core HRM domain.

WHAT ARE THE KEY TAKEAWAYS OF UCLA PGPX?

For me personally the key takeaway is the ability to view the business from a more holistic point of view. Being in HR, my learnings were very limited to my subject matter, but today I understand the business from all its relevant aspects. With this knowledge I aspire to lead my teams with more confidence and complete business acumen.

HOW HAS THE PEER GROUP IMPACTED YOUR LEARNING EXPERIENCE?

Modern day professionals are evaluated in a manner where they are observed constantly. That is the glass box approach to how they’re expected to perform while being constantly observed. The genesis of the peep and peer groups at UCLA exposes us all to this reality and makes us comfortable with this modern-day phenomenon of success.

IS THERE ANY OTHER POINT THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO HIGHLIGHT ABOUT THE PROGRAM CURRICULUM, FACULTY, MODULES, ETC.?

One of the key reasons for me to select UCLA PGPX was the exposure to not just a brand name in education but also the understanding of great business practices, and the exposure to a realistic and future looking faculty. Being able to view modern day business from a magnifying glass and zoom in to see your future possibilities has to be hands down the most promising element of my experience.