Course Hosts

Khush Cooper MSW Ph.D

Lecturer, Department of Social Welfare, Luskin School of Public Affairs

Dr. Cooper teaches ‘Being a Leader: An Ontological Phenomenological Approach’ and ‘Public Policy for Children and Youth’ at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. She received her MSW and PhD in Social Work from Luskin. As a social entrepreneur and specialist in the study and implementation of what’s next for human services, Dr. Cooper uses long-standing relationships with policy-makers, leading practitioners, and consumers to shield and guide California’s organizations, both public and private, through reform initiatives. Starting out as a group home child care worker, she has held the positions of house manager, foster care social worker, non-public school teacher, FFA Director, and Director of Research and Quality at the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services.

Her firm, Khush Cooper and Associates, is currently conducting the first ever LGBTQ Youth Preparedness Scan for LA County which assesses all 11 county departments’ capacity to properly serve LGBTQ children, youth and families in order to prevent future disproportionality of these youth in the child welfare system. She is a founding board member of the LA LGBT Child Abuse Prevention Council and consults on a local, state and national level in the area of LGBT youth in systems.

Dylan Stafford

Assistant Dean, Fully Employed MBA Program, UCLA Anderson School of Management

Dylan is accountable for UCLA Anderson’s FEMBA program admissions, and since 2003 has overseen 70% program growth. At almost 1,000 students, FEMBA is one of the most popular graduate programs in all of UCLA.

Since 1996, in Bloomberg BusinessWeek and US News & World Report, FEMBA has been ranked from #1 to #6 in the nation, never lower. FEMBA consistently earns top marks for Student Satisfaction, Caliber of Classmates and Teaching Quality.

Before UCLA, Dylan was a Change Management Consultant and International HR Manager for Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering conglomerate and one of the world’s biggest companies. He began in the Silicon Valley, and was promoted to a three-year assignment at the global headquarters in Munich, Germany, where he founded InterGreat!, a social-networking platform for high-potential European managers.

Dylan earned his MBA from the Chicago Booth School of Business, with concentrations in Finance and Marketing. He graduated with honors from Texas A&M University, where he was a member of the Corps of Cadets and served on the Ross Volunteers, the Honor Guard of the Governor of Texas. He speaks German and Spanish.

In 2018, Dylan released his second book, Building a Winning Organization: Leadership Lessons from the World’s Best People, Companies, and Universities. In 2010, his first book Daddy Muscles: A First-Time Father’s Diary of Marriage, Pregnancy, Parenthood and a Second Chance to Become a Real Man was released.

Amy Waterman Ph.D

Professor in Residence, UCLA Nephrology Deputy Director; Transplant Research and Education Center (TREC), Terasaki Research Institute; Senior Quality Officer, UCLA Kidney Transplant Program; Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation (FAST)

Dr. Waterman is a Professor in Residence in the Division of Nephrology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the Senior Quality Researcher of the UCLA Kidney Transplant Program, one of the largest and most successful transplant programs in the country, and is part of the UCLA CORE Kidney Program. Dr. Waterman also serves as the Deputy Director of the Transplant Research and Education Center (TREC) at the Terasaki Research Institute (TRI). TRI continues the work of Dr. Paul Terasaki, a pioneer in the field of transplant, who worked to solve the major problems that limit the success of organ transplant. Explore Transplant aligns with the Institute’s vision to eliminate the organ donor shortage and end organ transplant failure.