BFS July 2023 Newsletter

Updates From

IN THIS ISSUE

CALENDAR // BIRTHDAYS

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION

NEW HIRES

STUDENT EVENTS ON CAMPUS

JULY SAFETY TIPS

BFS YELP

CONTACT

BIRTHDAYS

Tae Yun Ku

Jack Megorden

William Chung

Soren Bondesen

Catherine Gooderham

Jennifer Redner

Kentaro Yamazaki

Michael McGinnis

Michelle Morales

Tasha Nwude

Gerardo Salcedo

Katherine Bloom

Tara Brown

Dean Malilay

Adrienne Malka

Alulla Kefelegn

Maria Delgado Salazar

Danny Lei

John Tan

HOLIDAYS

Independence Day || July 4 **UCLA Holiday

Ashura || July 28

Xiomara Noble

Andrew Perez

Maria Rodriguez

Steve Yagobian

Ronald Blevins Pomajambo

David Aberbuch

Mario Berges Castellanos

Albert Boone

Lucy Karas

Amyia Whitfield

William Brady

Aaron Choi

Julius Tuazon

Marina Zdobnova

Gregorio Veloz

Jacob Weisinger

Alison Yang

Vanessa Cruces

Michael Diaz

Devan Hinojosa

Cathy Huynh

Siew Ng

Daniel Nguyen

Megan Perez

Ivonne Juarez

Danton Richards

Mengzi Yang

Suris Medel Escamilla

Nipsey Courtney

Christopher Ramos

Julie Vetter

Brenda Ruiz

Paul Kimball

Robert Rieth

Employee Recognition

for going above and beyond accomplishing extraordinary results for the University.

What do people say about Miesha?

‣ Miesha has been an unwavering force in Student Accounts helping train new sta members while maintaining oversight of customer service inquiries. She’s done an outstanding job with encouraging sta to respond timely to all inquiries within Student Accounts’ service guarantee.

Spirit Award — for energy, positive attitude, and heartfelt actions that create a better work environment

What do people say about

‣ Amalia is a great role model, has an amazing personality that makes work a job. Wonderfully smart and outgoing, she proceeds to do her job with pride and she believes in every single one of us.

What do people say about

Hidden Figure Award — for work behind-the-scenes that provides exceptional value to the team

‣ Omar does all the normal duties but then has transcended what is expected. He makes an extra e ort to get to know clients and coworkers while providing incredible service overall. Omar’s positive personality has helped us work on some cross-campus barriers that were giving us issues.

Outstanding Student — for students whose work add value to the workplace

What do people say about Amanda?

Omar Cupich, Financial Mgmt & Reporting

‣ Amanda Lara goes above and beyond, and we're lucky to have her. She approaches every project with enthusiasm, no matter the topic or task. She empowers her fellow student associates and never says no to a learning opportunity. She’s always looking for new ways to support our team, our clients, and the campus.

Amalia Martirosyan, Accounts Payable

Amanda Lara Rossini-Hein, BFS Ops

To: Gimena, Gaylissa

Subject: PHOTO

Date: Tuesday, June 27, 2023 10:11:22 AM

Welcome Aboard

Fun Fact: I was in table tennis varsity back in high school. I still love playing ping pong, but not competing anymore.

How do you like to end your day?: I always end my day with a BIG “thank you” for all the challenges and blessings that come my way every single day.

What led you to this career?: I went to a travel school years ago hoping that I would be traveling all over the world. I ended up making travel arrangements for everyone else except myself! But, I’m glad to have found my UC Travel team. They are the best colleagues I’ve ever had in my entire career!

Sent from my iPhone

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?: I used to dream of becoming a newscaster when I was younger, maybe an anchorwoman like Bridget Jones.

Fun Fact: I have done scuba diving and raced a turtle on the sea bed. I also love experimenting with new recipes and creating my own fusion dishes.

How do you like to end your day?: I always try to give myself a break from electronic devices for at least an hour before bed and take time to plan my priorities and tomorrow’s schedule before I go to bed.

What led you to this career?: I have a keen interest in analyzing financial data. I enjoy working with financial information, assessing trends and extracting meaningful insights. It fascinates me to know the story that numbers want to tell.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?: I always want to contribute to the wellbeing of individuals and communities, which is why I wanted to pursue a career in healthcare.

Neetika Kalyani

Financial Mgmt & Reporting

From: GAIL GIMENA

Gaylissa Gimena

UC Travel

Joshua Ramos Travel Accounting

How do you like to end your day?: Usually, I like to end my day with a family game or some sort of family activity— something that gets the family smiling and laughing—before a nice hot tea before bed. As they say, “laughing is and will always be the best form of therapy.”

What led you to this career?: What led me to this career is the career opportunity UCLA o ers and the growth one will receive when joining the educational industry. I believe with goals set in place, perseverance, and the attitude one sets every morning, you can climb the ladder here at UCLA. As they say, “you miss every shot you don’t take.”

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?: When I was a kid, I wanted to be in a SWAT team. I just liked the look and the fearless attitude they brought to the field.

Events on Campus

he Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center will undergo seismic reconstruction until January. Other campus buildings, including Powell Library, also began seismic reconstruction earlier this year. As part of the reconstruction, the building’s exterior and interior walls will be reinforced to increase seismic stability. The university also aims to add accessibility upgrades as well as safety enhancements. According to Chaitali Mukherjee, the executive director of the Ashe Center and an internal medicine physician, the seismic upgrades are designed to allow the Ashe Center to maintain its structural integrity in the event of an earthquake. The Ashe Center will remain open and o er all its services during the construction, but certain services will be temporarily relocated.

Advocates for the UCLA disabled community are working to establish a Disability Cultural Center that will o er a space for disabled empowerment, provide academic and career resources for disabled students, and celebrate disabled culture and history. The center will be named in honor of Lily Shaw, the 2019-2020 USAC facilities commissioner and cofounder of the Disabled Student Union who passed away in 2020. UCLA Student A airs sta began working with students from USAC and the Disabled Student Union in mid-2020 to establish a Disability Cultural Center. Currently, the center has $59,000 in allocations, with $30,000 from the USAC surplus and $29,000 in donations from a GoFundMe campaign initiated after Shaw’s death. The center would ideally be located in Ackerman Union or Kerckho Hall, but due to a lack of available, accessible spaces on campus, it might be located in a less accessible space, such as the Hill, until a permanent location is determined.

Read the full article here

Julia Zhou/Daily Bruin

Read the full article here

Joseph Jimenez/Daily Bruin

July Safety Tips

July 2023

Staying Active While Working

By Jerry Wilson (IRM)

The daily grind of work can sometimes keep us pinned to our work chairs and desks. This may mean we don’t get as much movement during the day that our bodies need to help us feel better. Did you know that UCLA Recreation has many programs to help us stay active, regardless of our abilities?

If you are looking for a little more energy, a little more flexibility, to strengthen your core or other muscles, these programs provide valuable tips and demonstrations by professional trainers in a fun, supportive, no-pressure atmosphere! Check out the links below for some options o ered by UCLA

Recreation:

UCLA Recreation Home Page — Start here to see all of the great programs o ered

Subscribe to Move Mail — Twice-daily emails at 10AM and 2PM that provide short stretches and activities to help break up the day

Warm Up to Work — Daily morning stretches and movement to help us start the day. Request to be added to the list by sending an email to: eterry@recreation.ucla.edu

The Bruin Health Improvement Program (BHIP)— Includes 10 week long programs designed to increase the fitness and health of UCLA sta and faculty

BFS

Elemental (2023)

A young woman made of fire named Ember grows up as a first-generation fire elemental in Element City—a massive metropolis populated by four elements— air, earth, fire and water. Infrastructural problems at the family business leads to Ember meeting Wade, a water elemental. Despite their di erences, an unlikely romance blooms as they work together to save Ember’s family business.

Recommended by BFS

Watch More

The Help by Kathryn Stockett — Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Seemingly as di erent from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are su ocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Tags: Historical-Fiction, Adult

Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken — A manifesto to change how you eat and how you think about the human body. We have entered a new age of eating. For the first time in human history, most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food. There’s a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: if it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, it’s UPF. These products are specifically engineered to behave as addictive substances, driving excess consumption. In this book, Chris van Tulleken, father, scientist, doctor, and award-winning BBC broadcaster, marshals the latest evidence to show how governments, scientists, and doctors have allowed transnational food companies to create a pandemic of diet-related disease.

Tags: Nonfiction, Health, Science

Burn It Down by Maureen Ryan — An expose of patterns of harassment and bias in Hollywood, the grassroots reforms under way, and the labor and activist revolutions that recent scandals have ignited. It is never just One Bad Man. Abuse and exploitation of workers is baked into the very foundations of the entertainment industry. To break the cycle and make change that sticks, it's important to stop looking at headline-making stories as individual events. Veteran reporter Maureen Ryan draws on decades of experience to connect the dots and illuminate the deeper forces sustaining Hollywood's corrosive culture. Fresh reporting sheds light on problematic situations at companies like Lucasfilm and shows like Saturday Night Live. Weaving together insights from industry insiders, historical context, and pop-culture analysis, Burn It Down paints a groundbreaking and urgently necessary portrait of what’s gone wrong in the entertainment world—and how we can fix it.

Tags: Nonfiction, Pop Culture

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen — When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her. Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can a ord.

Tags: Historical-Fiction, Romance

BAKED GOODS

S’mores Brownies

These delicious brownie s’mores let you enjoy the popular campfire treat on top of a brownie.

Prep Time 15 Min. Servings 20 Cook Time 25 Min.

Ingredients

For the brownies:

‣ 1 package fudge brownie mix

‣ 1/2 cup vegetable oil

‣

2 large eggs

‣ 3 tbsp water

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (175ºC).

2. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan.

3. Make the brownies: Stir brownie mix, oil, eggs, and water together in a medium bowl until well-blended. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

4. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.

5. While the brownies are baking, make the topping: Break graham crackers into 1-inch pieces and plant into a bowl. Add the marshmallows and chopped chocolate. Toss to combine.

For the s’mores topping:

‣ 6 graham crackers

‣ 1 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows

‣ 8 bars milk chocolate, coarsely chopped

Author: Liza Louise from Allrecipes

6. Remove the brownies from the oven and sprinkle with the topping ingredient.

TIP

7. Return the brownie and s’mores topping combination to the oven and continue baking until a toothpick inserted 2 inches from the side of the pan comes out clean, about 7 to 10 more minutes.

It is recommended to use a brownie mix like Betty Crocker’s, but you can use any brownie mix of your choice for this recipe.