UCLA Ventures: Fostering Entrepreneurship Both On and Off-Campus

Speaker: Brandon Eicher, Director of UCLA Ventures

Brandon Eicher (’07) serves as the Director of UCLA Ventures, a community-built venture portfolio that supports UCLA and its entrepreneurial ecosystem. Since he returned to the university in early 2016, UCLA Ventures has grown rapidly, adding some of UCLA’s most prominent entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to the group’s already vibrant membership base. Under his leadership, this cohort of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, which is committed to building and sustaining UCLA’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, has pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity in their respective venture-backed companies to UCLA Ventures. This support will have a lasting impact on the university, its students, and its alumni.

Prior to returning to UCLA, Brandon earned a Master’s degree in International Relations and International Economics with a specialization in Finance from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He then moved to Chicago, where he worked as a Consultant for Grenzebach Glier & Associates (GG&A) in its higher education practice area. While at GG&A, Brandon served an impressive client list, which included Cornell University, Dartmouth College, INSEAD, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, and the University of Queensland, among others.