Business – CSUN Today https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu California State University, Northridge Thu, 28 Mar 2024 16:52:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.30 Did You Know? CSUN VITA Clinic https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/business/did-you-know-csun-vita-clinic/ Wed, 13 Mar 2024 23:20:36 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=55401

Tax season often brings stress and anxiety, with concerns about correctly filling out forms, but did you know that CSUN’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Clinic can help smooth out the process?

CSUN’s VITA Clinic is part of a national network that provides free tax assistance for low-income individuals and families via appointment. CSUN students are also eligible for this service! Staffed by CSUN students, the clinic serves San Fernando Valley residents, as well as other residents of Los Angeles County. The location on campus in Bookstein Hall is open year-round, but during tax-season, pop-ups open at various locations around Los Angeles County.

“The services we provide are very beneficial,” said Areli Araujo, a coordinator at CSUN’s VITA Clinic. “Tax preparation fees have skyrocketed and having to pay them can definitely be a burden. You can see the excitement and gratitude on taxpayers’ faces when we tell them at the end of the tax process that it’s one hundred percent free.”

To take advantage of VITA’s services, taxpayers, including students, must meet specific income qualifications, though there are exceptions.

Araujo urged CSUN students to take advantage of the VITA Clinic.

“When you’re a student, you’ve already got to pay for tuition, housing and food, so why pay to get your taxes done when you could actually come to one of our locations and get them done for free? And you’d get an accurate return as well because all our student preparers are IRS-certified,” she said.

Last year, CSUN’s clinic was ranked first in the nation for the number of tax returns submitted. Nearly 300 student volunteers provided tax preparation and translation assistance for over 8,500 taxpayers.

To learn more about eligibility and other details, visit the CSUN VITA Clinic website. Translators for Spanish and ASL are available.

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Analisa Venolia
CSUN Prof Confident Media Will Survive Recent Newsroom Upheavals https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/arts-and-culture/csun-prof-confident-media-will-survive-recent-newsroom-upheavals/ Tue, 12 Mar 2024 16:47:24 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=55319

CSUN journalism professor José Luis Benavides is confident that that the field of journalism will survive the recent spate of newsroom upheavals. Image by metamorworks, iStock.

Newsrooms across the nation. CSUN journalism professor José Luis Benavides is confident that that the field of journalism will survive the recent spate of newsroom upheavals. Image by metamorworks, iStock.



 

As political polarization threatens the foundations of American democracy, newsrooms across the nation — which have long played a vital role in checking political power and keeping the citizenry informed — are laying off staff or disappearing all together.

Those that remain are struggling to retain readers/viewers while trying to figure out how to successfully transition to the digital age. California State University, Northridge journalism professor José Luis Benavides is confident that they will figure it out.

“I am a journalism professor, so I kind of have to believe,” Benavides said, with a laugh. “But at the same time, if you look at what has happened in the past, when there has been a need, journalists have found a way to fill it, to let people know what is going on.”

José Luis Benavides

José Luis Benavides

Benavides admitted that journalism as we currently know it is in flux.

“I think that the size of the crisis in journalism is growing,” he said. “The industries that created journalism or have been creating journalism in the last century are in decline. ‘In decline’ is really a friendly way to say that they are going through a period in which they can’t find a way to sustain themselves as a business, which means that many of them are likely to disappear. That means a really uncertain future for those who are practicing journalism at the moment.”

Benavides, who teaches in CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media and Communication, pointed to a study by the Pew Research Center that said in 2008 there were 115,000 people producing news across a variety of platforms. Today, that number is about 80,000, he said.

“The decrease in newspaper employment is just dramatic,” Benavides said. “Broadcast news has remained slightly steady, but the numbers do seem to be going down. The only area where employment is growing is in digital platforms.”

He pointed to digital publications like ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism news site. Its reporting has drawn attention to political, health and public safety issues across the country and inspired policy changes.

 “It does a wonderful job, and is a successful nonprofit,” he said. “But as a nonprofit they can’t really employ as many people as a newspaper.”

Those newspapers that are succeeding, such as The New York Times, Benavides said, are doing so by positioning themselves as “global newspapers.”

“They are able to generate enough revenue that they can continue to grow,” he said. “They are doing significant, important work, but not everybody can work at The New York Times, nor is The New York Times able to tell the stories needed to be told in communities across the country.”

In the “old days,” Benavides said, reporters would start out a small community papers covering anything and everything and work their way up to important beats or editing positions, or on to bigger, more prestigious newspapers in their community or somewhere else.

 Today, he said, reporters must become “subject-matter specialists” and create a following of “readers” who respect their work and want more of it.

“They also need to be more versatile about all the forms of content creation that are not necessarily based on the written word,” Benavides said, pointing to the variety of digital platforms that are now available like podcasting.

Digital platforms, he said, are providing opportunities for communities not often covered by traditional media to get their news heard, particularly as that media continues to significantly cut their staff sizes.

He noted that the LAist, Los Angeles’ largest National Public Radio station broadcasting at 89.3 FM, is successfully filling the gaps in the coverage of the city’s numerous communities left by the downsizing of the Los Angeles Times and the variety of newspapers — from the Los Angeles Daily News and the Pasadena Star-News to the San Bernardino Sun — that make up the Southern California News Group. He pointed out that it was a reporter with Knock LA, an online nonprofit community journalism project, that broke the stories about gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“Public media and nonprofit media are creating viable media alternatives and still providing valuable information to the community,” Benavides said. “I think ethnic newspapers, which have been heavily hit by the current crisis in journalism may find that they can thrive in a digital environment.”

“The problem is that so much of the digital media is fragmented,” he said. “You like one news site, and the algorithm sends you a link to a similar site and soon you are just seeing content that has all the same perspective. That doesn’t mean that partisan journalism is not journalism. Then, it becomes incumbent on the consumer to seek out different news sources.”

But that doesn’t mean that important topics will not make it beyond new media digital platforms, he said.

 “While Knock LA may have broken the story about gangs in the sheriff’s department, the Los Angeles Timesand the other media in LA are now covering and monitoring the story,” he said. “If journalists are covering important news that impacts a community, the community will find a way to learn about it. And if there is important news that needs to be told, there will always be a journalist who will want to tell that community’s story.”

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carmen
Wall Street Pioneer R. Martin Chavez to Serve as Nazarian College’s Distinguished Speaker https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/media-releases/former-wall-street-pioneer-r-martin-chavez-to-deliver-nazarian-colleges-distinguished-speaker-lecture/ Mon, 26 Feb 2024 19:33:30 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=55080

R. Martin “Marty” Chavez

R. Martin “Marty” Chavez

R. Martin “Marty” Chavez, a trailblazing entrepreneur who turned a Wall Street trading business into a software business and in the process revolutionized the way capital moves and works, will provide insights into the world of finance on Tuesday, March 12, as part of the Younes Nazarian Distinguished Speaker Series at California State University, Northridge.

Chavez, currently a partner and a vice chairman of the global investment firm Sixth Street, is scheduled to give a fireside chat from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the university’s Orchard Conference Center, located near the Lindley Avenue entrance to the campus.

“Dr. Chavez is widely renowned as a financial trailblazer, influential business leader and champion of diversity—both in the workplace and the community,” said Chandra Subramaniam, dean of CSUN’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, which hosts the speaker series. “He is also known as an outstanding role model and mentor to many. Having Dr. Chavez join us to share his insights is an invaluable opportunity for Nazarian College students and the overall community.”

The Nazarian Distinguished Speaker Series was created with the intention of bringing speakers to CSUN’s campus who can motivate and inspire students and alumni. The series is named in honor of the late philanthropist and entrepreneur Younes Nazarian, a passionate supporter of education and the arts and a principal supporter of CSUN’s Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya). His son, David, a prominent businessman, philanthropist and CSUN alumnus, made a transformative gift that was recognized by the naming of CSUN’s business college as the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics.

Los Angeles Clippers CFO Eric Chan opened the annual series in October with a discussion about his journey from college student entrepreneur to C-Suite executive of a multimillion-dollar professional basketball franchise.

Chavez is expected to discuss his career journey and offer advice for CSUN students from a wide range of majors and disciplines during the event.

Chavez joined Sixth Street in 2021, two years after retiring as chief information officer and chief financial officer at Goldman Sachs where he was also global co-head of the firm’s securities division. He was also a partner and member of the Goldman Sachs Management Committee. Chavez was one of the first developers of SecDB, an early platform that transformed the trading business into a software business. While at Goldman Sachs, Chavez was one of the few openly gay men in a top job on Wall Street and led the firm’s efforts to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Chavez was the CEO and co-founder of Kiodex, a provider of web-based risk management and trading systems, and chief technology officer and co-founder of Quorum Software Systems.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemical sciences and a master’s degree in computer science from Harvard University and a doctorate in medical information sciences from Stanford University.

For more information, visit the Nazarian Distinguished Speaker Series website.

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carmen
Fellowship Supports CSUN Prof’s Efforts to Improve Offshore Energy Safety https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/csun-leaders/fellowship-supports-csun-profs-efforts-to-improve-offshore-energy-safety/ Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:59:56 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=55160

Maryam Tabibzadeh

Maryam Tabibzadeh

Maryam Tabibzadeh is in the process of developing a digitized, data-driven, early-warning system that could prevent disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — considered the largest marine oil spill in history — which devastated the Gulf Coast and killed hundreds of thousands of marine animals.

To help her achieve her goal, Tabibzadeh, an associate professor of manufacturing systems engineering and management at California State University, Northridge, has been named an Early-Career Research Fellow in Offshore Energy Safety by the Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

“It is quite an honor to receive the fellowship, and it is an affirmation that the work I am doing is important,” said Tabibzadeh, who teaches in CSUN’s College of Engineering and Computer Science.

The GRP Early-Career Research Fellowship helps researchers to further develop their professional career. Fellows receive a $76,000 financial award along with mentoring support to provide them with independence, flexibility and a built-in support network as they take risks to research ideas, pursue unique collaborations and build a network of colleagues.

Tabibzadeh and other recipients of the fellowship will be working to improve the understanding, management and reduction of systemic risk in offshore energy activities.

Her research focuses on risk analysis in complex safety-critical and technology-intensive industries such as the offshore drilling sector. Specifically, Tabibzadeh is investigating the roles human and organizational factors play, along with technological elements, in offshore drilling failures.

“When a disaster happens, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we tend to look at the ultimate, technical failures that led to the drilling accident,” Tabibzadeh said. “In many cases, we ignore the soft components, the human and organizational factors, that may have actually been the root causes of those incidents. Even the technical failures have roots in human and organizational factors, or those factors played a critical role in related errors.”

Tabibzadeh has developed both qualitative and quantitative risk assessment methodologies to analyze the critical role human and organizational factors, such as safety culture, business procedures or governmental policies, play in the safety of offshore drilling operations. In some studies, she specifically emphasized the risks involved in implementation and interpretation of a critical procedure called negative pressure test as a primary method to ascertain well integrity in offshore drilling. A negative pressure test involves lowering the pressure inside of a well by pumping fluid out in order to make sure that the well’s structure can withstand leaks. The misinterpretation of the negative pressure test was one of the major contributing causes of the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

“One of the issues with drilling accidents has been the misinterpretation of negative pressure tests,” she said. “I want to develop a conceptual risk-assessment framework that captures the role the human and organizational factors play in the interpretation of such tests. The goal is to understand where the first error is made. One error can lead to other errors, which in turn can lead to an accident if they aren’t caught in time.

“One of the ideas I have is to look into several offshore drilling incidents, identifying their contributing causes across the AcciMap (a systems-based technique for accident analysis) framework, which is a systematic accident investigation methodology,” Tabibzadeh continued. “I would then identify the common contributing causes of all those accidents and use that as a foundation to develop a list of leading indicators that could be used to predict and prevent future accidents. That can then be digitized and automated through an interface such as a dashboard to help safety managers better monitor the safety of their offshore operations.”

Tabibzadeh said one of her biggest obstacles is collecting the relevant data from energy companies that are reluctant to share that information. She is hoping that the Offshore Energy Safety fellowship will help open doors so she can gather hard data from their systems.

If her research is successful, it could have long-term impact, both ecologically and economically, on the human and marine communities that rely on the Gulf of Mexico for survival. It could also help oil companies save money by improving offshore drilling safety and preventing future accidents in this field.

“We really do not want another Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere else in the world,” she said.

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Caruso Talks Shop(ping) at Valley Economic Alliance Summit https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/csun-leaders/caruso-headlines-valley-economic-alliance-summit/ Fri, 19 Jan 2024 22:29:43 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=54913

Legendary retail developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso headlined a gathering of more than 200 of the region’s elected officials, business leaders, CSUN leaders and alumni at the campus’ Orchard Conference Center on Jan. 11. Caruso — whose eponymous company, Caruso, is known for iconic L.A. shopping centers such as The Grove and Calabasas Commons, addressed the second-annual “Our Region, Our Future” summit convened by the Valley Economic Alliance. He spoke about his background, starting from scratch in real estate, and emphasized the need to build a range of housing — especially affordable housing — and more mixed-use (residential with retail) development. “There is buying power in the Valley, like nowhere else in L.A.,” Caruso said.

Chandra Subramaniam, dean of CSUN’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, which co-sponsored the summit, welcomed Caruso and all the program’s dignitaries to campus. On the very cold and blustery January morning, he also presented Caruso with a welcome piece of Nazarian College swag: a fleece vest.

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CSUN Students Offer Free Tax Preparation Help to Low-Income People https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/media-releases/csun-students-offer-free-tax-preparation-help-to-low-income-people/ Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:30:09 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=54832

To help take the stress out of Tax Day 2024, CSUN's VITA Clinic is offering free tax preparation assistance to low-income families and individuals from Jan. 22 through April 15. Photo by Lee Choo.

To help take the stress out of Tax Day 2024, CSUN’s VITA Clinic is offering free tax preparation assistance to low-income families and individuals from Jan. 22 through April 15. Photo by Lee Choo.


The calendar may say January, but April 15 will be here before you know it and taxes will be due.

To help take the stress out of Tax Day 2024, California State University, Northridge’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Clinic in the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics is offering free tax preparation assistance to low-income families and individuals, including non-English speakers, people with disabilities and veterans, from Jan. 22 through April 15 at CSUN and more than a dozen satellite locations throughout Los Angeles County.

“Our faculty, staff and dedicated volunteer staff of over 300 students are eagerly waiting the launch of the tax season later this month,” said Rafael Efrat, Bookstein Chair in Taxation and director of the CSUN VITA Clinic. “We hope to build and expand on the service we have provided to the community year after year for the past 53 years. Our goal this year is to serve over 8,500 low-income taxpayers in Los Angeles County.”

The CSUN VITA Clinic is staffed by IRS-certified student volunteers and will be available to taxpayers six days a week at a variety of locations, including in CSUN’s Bookstein Hall; Las Palmas Park and San Fernando Public Library in San Fernando; Sun Valley Public Library; Valley Plaza Branch Library in North Hollywood; Grandview Library in Glendale; Mid Valley Regional Public Library in North Hills; Pacoima Public Library; Panorama Public Library; Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library and the nonprofit Inclusive Action for the City in Los Angeles. A complete list of locations, date and times can be found on the clinic’s website.

The clinic accepts walk-ins, but it is highly recommended that taxpayers schedule an appointment through the VITA website. A list of documents and forms of identification taxpayers must bring to their session can be found on the website. The maximum gross income limitation per tax return has been set at $64,000.

More than 300 CSUN student volunteers complete intensive training on handling federal and state tax returns. Aside from tax preparation, some of the students are trained to serve as financial coaches to the taxpayers at the clinic. In addition to providing service to the community, the CSUN VITA Clinic also gives students an opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge and experience in their field of study, and an opportunity to give back to the community.

Launched in 1970, the CSUN VITA Clinic is housed in the Bookstein Institute for Higher  Education in Taxation, located in the Nazarian College. The clinic provided assistance to more than 8,500 low-income taxpayers in 2023, generating more than $8 million in refunds to low-income taxpayers and $2.8 million in federal tax credits.

For more information about the CSUN VITA Clinic, call (818) 677-3600, email VITA@csun.edu or visit its website.

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carmen
CSUN Receives $3 Million Grant to Increase Number of Underserved Students in STEM, Arts Disciplines & Close Equity Gap https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/university-news/csun-receives-3-million-grant-to-increase-number-of-underserved-students-in-stem-arts-disciplines-close-equity-gap/ Tue, 09 Jan 2024 18:48:08 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=54767

CSUN has received a five-year, $3 million federal grant for the creation of a new project to increase the number of underrepresented students studying science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and the arts, and health sciences and to close equity gaps. Photo by Ringo Chiu.

CSUN has received a five-year, $3 million federal grant for the creation of a new project to increase the number of underrepresented students studying science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and the arts, and health sciences and to close equity gaps. Photo by Ringo Chiu.


California State University, Northridge has been awarded a five-year, $3 million Title V grant from the U.S. Department of Education DHSI (Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions) program for the creation of a new project to increase the number of underrepresented students studying science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and the arts, and health sciences and to close equity gaps.

The money will support cross-divisional and multi-disciplinary “Strengthening Equitable Culturally Responsive Environments (SECURE) for Student Success (SfS2),” a collaborative effort between CSUN, Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills and College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita.

“Our goals are quite simple, but impactful,” said CSUN electrical and computer engineering professor S.K. Ramesh, director of SfS2. “We hope to increase enrollment, improve academic performance — including retention and graduation rates — and reduce equity gaps. To that end, the project will expand and enhance curriculum, research fellowships and culturally-responsive, work-based learning experiences in in-demand industry sectors for our students.

“For the project to be successful, and this is key, we are providing support and increasing faculty capacity to plan and implement culturally-responsive pedagogies, proactive advisement and mentoring,” Ramesh continued. “To put it simply, our students cannot succeed to the best of their abilities unless we give the faculty the tools they need to help our students succeed.

“This is an exciting new approach that we hope will serve as a model, not just for the rest of the CSU, but for institutions of higher learning across the country,” he said.

SfS2 is patterned after CSUN’s acclaimed AIMS2 (Attract, Inspire, Mentor and Support Students) program in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, also the brainchild of Ramesh, which launched 2011 with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. AIMS2 students work in cohorts and have access to a wide range of academic resources such as faculty and peer mentors, tutors, educational field trips, workshops, career opportunities and travel grants to participate in conference.

With a student retention rate of more than 90 percent, and a three-year transfer graduation rate of more than 70 percent, AIMS2 was hailed by Excelencia in Education as a national example of an evidence-base program that advanced Latino student in higher education.

Ramesh said he expects SfS2 — which, in addition to STEM majors will include students studying the health sciences and the arts— to have similar success.

“We anticipate that the project will positively impact approximately 6,000 students at CSUN and our partner community colleges over the five-year duration of the grant at an average cost of less than $500 per student,” he said.

He said he hopes the programs and services envisioned through the project will be institutionalized across the CSUN campus “with measurable and accountable goals and aligning resources to ensure long-term collective success.”

Ramesh said SfS2 will be “all encompassing” when it comes to students. The project includes support for community college students before and after they transfer to CSUN; summer workshops; internships, industry engagement and career advisement; research opportunities with stipends; faculty and industry mentors; peer mentors; and undergraduate research symposiums, as well as ways to involve family members.

For participating faculty, the project includes curriculum enhancement and development support, workshops on multi-cultural competency and other forms of professional development.

SfS2  is closely aligned and complements CSUN’s Road Ahead Strategic plan under the able leadership of President Beck and colleagues campuswide.  “. “If we want our students to truly succeed, then we take and explore different approaches to education — different approaches to how we teach and a deeper appreciation for how our students learn.”

]]> carmen Head in the Game: LA Clippers Exec Shares Life and Career Advice https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/community/head-in-the-game-l-a-clippers-exec-shares-life-and-career-advice/ Wed, 08 Nov 2023 21:28:45 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=54381

Stay curious. Find your purpose. Keep networking. These were some of the key pieces of advice from LA Clippers Chief Financial Officer Eric Chan, who spoke to students and others who gathered at the Orchard Conference Center on Oct. 12, 2023.

Chan launched this semester’s Distinguished Speaker Series — a program hosted by CSUN’s David Nazarian School of Business and Economics that brings business leaders to campus to inspire students. Chan oversees the pro basketball organization’s financial operations, which now includes the Intuit Dome, the LA Clippers’ state-of-the-art arena in Inglewood that will open next year.

Chan’s talk was called “3-Pointers that Changed My Life,” and focused on the practices and philosophies that helped him throughout his career to his current position in professional basketball, where he’s been able to merge his lifelong passion for sports with his head for numbers.

“Three-pointers are actually, statistically, one of the most important shots in the game,” Chan said. His “3-pointer” advice included staying curious and finding opportunities to learn more throughout life, finding one’s “reason for being” as part of the Japanese philosophy known as Ikigai, and the importance of building relationships and networking.

Chan also incorporated multi-media elements, including marketing videos from the LA Clippers basketball team, slides, and even a clip from one of his favorite T.V.shows, “Ted Lasso,” to illustrate his points.

Chan, who attended U.C. Berkeley and Harvard Business School for his undergraduate and graduate degrees in business administration, respectively, spoke about the kinship he felt among so many first-generation students at CSUN. Chan told the audience that his parents had emigrated from China. “I felt a lot of responsibility to make good on all the hard work that my parents had put forth over the years,” he said.

At the end of the event, Chan took questions from audience members. Luis Salas, 24, asked about a pathway to training and conditioning professional athletes. He’s studying for his master’s degree in recreational sport management in the College of Health and Human Development. Chan advised starting with high school athletes and working his way up to professional teams. Salas said that’s exactly what he’s doing now. “My jobs right now are as a personal trainer and also a JV basketball coach,” said Salas. “Everything he said really resonated with me.”

Chandra Subramaniam, dean of the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, said what Chan presented was great advice for life, as well as for careers– particularly his tip to keep networking. “You know, we cannot grow by standing in a corner,” Subramaniam said. “Always go out searching for what you can do next.”

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Jenny Omara-Steinbeck
LA Clippers CFO Eric Chan Launches CSUN’s Annual Nazarian College Distinguished Speaker Series https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/education/la-clippers-cfo-eric-chan-launches-csuns-annual-nazarian-college-distinguished-speaker-series/ Thu, 28 Sep 2023 19:42:01 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=53970

Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Los Angeles Clippers CFO Eric Chan will discuss his journey from college student entrepreneur to C-Suite executive of a multimillion-dollar professional basketball franchise on Thursday, Oct. 12, at the first of this year’s Younes Nazarian Distinguished Speaker Series at California State University, Northridge.

Chen will share three pointers that changed his life during the event, which takes place from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the university’s Orchard Conference Center, located near the Lindley Avenue entrance of the campus.

“Eric is well-known in professional circles for his financial expertise, work ethic and commitment to his community,” said Chandra Subramaniam, dean of CSUN’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, which hosts the speaker series. “His overall journey is very relatable to our business students who are ambitious, enthusiastic and, for many, are learning the ropes as first-generation college students.”

The Younes Nazarian Distinguished Speaker Series was created with the intention of bringing speakers to campus who can motivate and inspire students and alumni.

“This event is crucial for students preparing themselves for real-world adversity,” Subramaniam said. “Not only will they learn tenacity in the process, but the ability to trust and rely on one’s self.”

While his CFO role primarily focuses on the LA Clippers, Chan also oversees the Kia Forum and the Intuit Dome, the LA Clippers new home in 2024. Prior to joining the LA Clippers in 2018, Chan held senior-level positions at several Fortune 500 companies, including Mattel Inc. and Cisco Systems.

Chan also lends his financial expertise to empower and uplift local communities in the Los Angeles area through his role at the El Segundo Economic Development Corporation. His professional achievements and community leadership recently led to his recognition as one of the most impactful Asians and Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders in culture nationwide
by Gold House.

For more information about the Nazarian Distinguished Speaker Series, visit the website https://www.csun.edu/nazarian-legacy-site/distinguished-speaker-series.

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carmen
Doubts About the Value of Economists’ Testimony May Have Cost Calif. Consumers $26 Billion, CSUN Prof Asserts https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/csun-leaders/doubts-about-the-value-of-economists-testimony-may-have-cost-calif-consumers-26-billion-csun-prof-asserts/ Wed, 09 Aug 2023 17:44:48 +0000 https://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/?p=53540

CSUN business law professor Melanie Stallings Williams asserts that a judge's doubts about the value of testimony by economic experts may have cost California consumers $26 billion. Photo by Guillem de Balanzo, iStock.

CSUN business law professor Melanie Stallings Williams asserts that a judge’s doubts about the value of testimony by economic experts may have cost California consumers $26 billion. Photo by Guillem de Balanzo, iStock.


In the fall of 2022, a federal judge in San Diego threw out a class-action lawsuit against eight of the state’s major oil companies that alleged they conspired to fix gas prices in California, costing consumers and retailers more than $26 billion.

What stunned California State University, Northridge business law professor Melanie Stallings Williams was that the judge in the case of Persian Gulf Inc. v. BP West Coast Products LLC acknowledged there was evidence of conspiracies to raise prices. However, the judge still dismissed the lawsuit because she did not find testimony from the economists who substantiated the price fixing valid.

Melanie Stallings Williams

Melanie Stallings Williams

“I was shocked,” said Williams, who teaches in CSUN’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics. “I wanted to get to the bottom of why she made a decision—even after finding that there was evidence of collusive conduct—that cost California consumers $26 billion and disproportionately impacted the poor and communities of color, who often don’t have much choice when it comes to buying gas.

“What it comes down to,” she said, “is that when it comes to testimony in antitrust cases, which this one was, judges are more likely to dismiss testimony by economic experts, even if those experts have won Nobel Prizes for their work in economics, particularly if they are testifying for the plaintiffs.”

Williams’ findings, “Daubert’s Mystery Surcharge: The Heavy Exclusion of Economic Expert Testimony in Antitrust Litigation,” were recently published in the legal journal Competition Policy International Antitrust Chronicle.

Williams said that in antitrust litigation—like the California case involving the oil companies—economic experts are “more likely to be challenged and their testimony is more likely to be excluded than is the testimony of another types of experts or even of economists testifying in other types of cases.”

“Further,” she said, “economic experts testifying for antitrust plaintiffs are far more likely to be challenged—with cases often resultingly dismissed—than are experts testifying for defendants in such cases.”

Defendants’ attorneys and judges often justify their decisions by citing a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, designed to ensure that expert testimony is both relevant and reliable.

Williams pointed to a study that showed between 2000 to 2008, researchers found that while antitrust cases accounted for only 0.3 percent of federal civil cases, they accounted for 18 percent of the challenges made to economic experts. A large majority, 85 percent, of these challenges were to plaintiffs’ economic experts. Courts were far more likely to exclude plaintiffs’ economic expert testimony, with 40 percent of such experts having their testimony fully or partially excluded. By contrast, successful Daubert challenges to defendant economic expert testimony in antitrust cases during the same period was only 1 percent.

“The irony is that Daubert was intended to help judges discern between those experts who truly knew their subjects and those who were basically quacks,” Williams said. “Instead, it’s being used to dismiss testimony by some of the nation’s leading economic experts.”

Which is what happened in the Persian Gulf case, she said.

University of California, Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein, one of the nation’s leading experts on oil and gasoline market pricing and competition, identified a “mystery surcharge” in California gas prices in the 2010s that suggested anticompetitive collusion among the oil companies.

“California consumers have long paid higher prices for gasoline than consumers in other states. This is partly attributable to a constellation of factors, including governmental regulation, the lack of a gas pipeline to the state and consumer preferences,” Williams said. “However, even accounting for these and other factors, Borenstein identified a ‘mystery gasoline surcharge,’ an excess fee that could not otherwise be explained.”

Borenstein identified a spike in the surcharge in 2015 that cost California consumers $6.7 billion in that year alone. In the subsequent five years, Borenstein found that the surcharge cost Californians more than $26 billion, which he equated to more than $2,600 for every family of four in the state.

“It was obvious that lawsuits would follow and that there would be a class-action, antitrust lawsuit,” Williams said. “After years of back-and-forth in court, the federal district judge granted a motion for summary judgement dismissing the suit on the basis that Daubert challenges to the plaintiff’s economists left no triable facts. That surprised me, given that some of the top economists had identified the surcharge.”

Williams said she believes the problem was that the judge did not understand the economic testimony.

“The court struggled with how a conspiracy to reduce competition and fix prices could have begun in 2011 but not have resulted in significant priced effects until 2015,” Williams said. “This is a concept that would be viewed by economists as unarguable—collusive conduct and its anticompetitive results are not always, or even typically, synchronous—became a legal basis for dismissal.”

Williams said lawyers for defendants in antitrust cases, such the one involving the oil companies, capitalize on the complexities involved in economic expert testimony and often successfully argue to have such testimony excluded as being irrelevant and unreliable.

“It’s an easy argument to make,” she said. “While a plaintiff’s economic expert must establish a record of sometimes complex concepts and data that would support a judgement, a defendant’s expert must simply be able to cast doubt on the plaintiff’s theory. Muddying the waters is often easier that proving a case.”

Plus, Williams said, the subject matter can be challenging for people who entered a profession in hopes of avoiding dealing with complex math problems.

“It has often been observed that law students—who later become lawyers and judges—are smart people who hate math,” she said. “For a classic law student, one who majored in political science and avoided statistics, this would create predictable problems in analyzing economic issues. The same could be true for other disciplines, of course, but somehow there is a greater inclination to take an intuitive—and, quite possibly, incorrect—approach to economics that one would avoid in evaluating testimony on topics like chemistry, physics or biology. This may increase the risk that a court excludes economic expert testimony because of the court’s own faulty understanding of the topic.

“In this case, I think California consumers paid the cost to the tune of more than $26 billion,” Williams said.

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