I became a Buddhist seven years ago. A Secular Buddhist. I was attracted by the curiosity and openness with which the Dalai Lama was engaged with science. I found it refreshing. In this article in the New York Times, the Dalai Lama insists: "If science proves some belief...

"Oh, you are a Professor at UCLA? You must really like teaching" is a comment that I, and many of my academic colleagues at research universities, hear very often when we mention to others what we do for a living. Yes, understanding complex ideas and being able to explain them...

There is a wonderful organization called Skip1.org with a creative and very simple motto: "Skip something. Feed a child."

The introductory video shows a young couple in a fancy restaurant who decide to skip their meal. The waitress takes their plates, goes through a door and on the...

Consider two micro-entrepreneurs. Rosa has a small business idea that requires an initial investment of $10,000 USD and will generate $11,000 USD at the end of the year -- a return of 10% per year. Nandini, also has a business idea that requires an initial investment of US$1,000 and will...

Risk and uncertainties in life affect everyone. Most people, including the poor, use savings as a mechanism to deal with unexpected demands for resources caused by death, disability and illness. For poor people, however, saving for the unexpected can often mean severely containing consumption which often includes going hungry, undernourishment...

Nearly half the world has no access to even simple financial services such as savings. In India, nearly 70% of the people are estimated to be excluded from formal financial services that most people like you and I who are reading this blog take for granted. There are...

I spent a month in India this Summer, promoting UCLA Anderson's Master in Financial Engineering (MFE) program, teaching and attending research conferences at the Indian School of Business (ISB), meeting entrepreneurs as well as senior government officials to talk about Financial Access at Birth...

Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the Microfinance revolution. Visionaries such as Fazel Hasan Ahmed of BRAC, who was recently knighted, and John Hatch, the founder of FINCA and the creator of Village Banking (not surprisingly, Grameen...

Memorial Day is just around the corner. Many of us are making plans how to spend the holiday. Perhaps we will invite family and friends to a barbecue party in the afternoon in the backyard or perhaps we will go to one ourselves. Perhaps we will take advantage of the...

Ask most people why we die as we grow old, the answer you most likely will get is that our body slowly wears out, getting weaker and weaker with increasingly delicate immune system that is no longer able to fight disease or physical injury. But that really begs the question:...

I met C K Prahalad only once, in India. He gave a riveting talk to a standing room only crowd of students, faculty, and administrators at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad where I spent a year on sabbatical leave from UCLA Anderson School....

Natural disasters -- earthquakes, floods, tsunamis -- leave many homeless and without any water, food, medicines and other critical supplies. The world community, eager to help the victims, begins to mobilize help and support. Many aid advocates and experts have argued against sending aid-in-kind -- old shoes, clothes etc. --...

Paheli, my teenage daughter, was totally obsessed with the "Twilight" series by Stephenie Meyer until a year or so ago. She mentioned that the hero of the series, Edward Cullen drives fancy cars. My pre-teen son Saransh, who can recognize and tell the model and the price of nearly every...