CSULB alumni - from Netflix to law - carry on Ukleja Center's legacy of ethical leadership

At the outset of her legal career, Celeste Ahl '11 thought she had found her dream job, but then she had an awakening.

Ahl enjoys being productive yet places a higher priority on nurturing personal relationships. Employment in an environment "where people worked on their wedding day" did not align with her values, so rather than give up on her aspirations, Ahl moved on to a firm enabling her to be true to herself and her vocation.

The Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership reinforced Ahl's courage to do so. Ukleja Center has a 20-year history at Cal State Long Beach and its Student Leadership Institute, which Ahl completed, stresses that knowing one's core values leads toward an ethical life.

"I think what's really unique about the ethical leadership class is that it's very introspective," Ahl said.

Ahl entered the legal profession to help clients to make responsible business decisions. She established herself as a real estate lawyer before returning to The Beach to teach the very program that influenced her own life. She wants students who have "seen endless examples of misconduct without consequence" in the news to internalize that strong values are still worthwhile.

"There are people you're not seeing in the headlines that are trying their very best, and it does make a difference," Ahl said.

Know thyself

Ukleja Center programs highlight four key values: integrity, servant leadership, excellence, and empowerment. The Student Leadership Institute, open to all majors, is a yearlong program designed to help students live by these principles and determine what matters to themselves.

"Knowing who they are as a leader comes first," said Janey Roeder, director of the Ukleja Center. "That comes from knowing what their core values are."

To this end, one exercise directs students to ascertain where their values, strengths, passions and responsibilities intersect. Another asks students to chart parallel courses for their personal, educational and professional progressions.

"Throughout the semester, we emphasize coming back to the 'sweet spot' and aligning their choices with their values," Ahl said.

Besides helping students to envision a good life, Student Leadership Institute promotes doing good. Students venture around Long Beach for volunteer service and to meet leaders in several fields for discussions addressing the ethical dimensions of their work.

A visit to a wealth advisory firm can prompt a conversation about financial ethics and a stop at City Hall is a time to talk about transparency in government. This year's agenda also includes talks on environmental stewardship, diversity and inclusion, and ethics in engineering and product design.

"I love the Socratic method of learning: The discussion, the debate, the exploring topics without rights answers sometimes, and to be in the complexity of what decision-making actually looks like in the business world," said Zulema Uriarte '10, now Director of Inclusion and Diversity Strategy for Netflix Animation Studios.

The center helped her to understand how she could make a positive impact in the business world, and to give gave her the stability to stand by her values before starting out on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder.

"To have the opportunity to find your core compass of right and wrong and how you want to approach things before you get to that place, helps you to have an understanding of how you want to show up in the world with integrity," Uriarte said.

Ukleja Center's 20 years at CSULB

The Ukleja Center is housed within the College of Business and has a wide reach across campus. In addition to the Student Leadership Institute, its educational work includes allocating Ethics Across the Curriculum grants to faculty who incorporate ethical studies into their lessons and hosting annual Ethics at The Beach seminars.

Center alumni work in fields including aerospace, finance, government, law and media. About 80 of them gathered in June to celebrate Ukleja's 20th year on campus.

They included Peter Velez '16, who studied accounting on the way to his bachelor's in management. He now serves with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a nonprofit corporation under the aegis of the Securities and Exchange Commission that watches the firms auditing public companies.

Velez looks back on his accounting classes as sources of knowledge about the importance of auditing and regulation. He sees Ukleja in a broader context, as a continuation of liberal arts traditions going back to the time of Aristotle and humanity's quest to determine what it means to do the right thing.

"An approach that I recall is that it is important not to justify 'the end' by any means necessary," Velez said. "This is especially important in the business world where it can be easy to justify wrong actions for the sake of an attractive end-goal, i.e., career or wealth accumulation. In the end, this mindset will result in many damaged lives and individuals broken by the pursuit of their goals, which they clearly had envisioned would bring them a better future."