USC Marshall School of Business

Marshall MBAs are only getting better at giving back as the 7th Annual USC Marshall Challenge for Charity Alumni Gala raised more than $10,000 to support three local charities, including the Special Olympics of Southern California, Junior Achievement of Southern California and A Better LA.

The April 2 event drew more than 150 Marshall students, alumni, faculty and friends to the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Toyota was the corporate sponsor for the event. Other in-kind sponsors for the event included ONEHOPE Wine, Diageo and Le Bon Garcon.

This was the first year that A Better LA, a non-profit founded by former USC football Coach Pete Carroll to reduce violence in underserved communities, was included as a beneficiary of the gala. Brian Center, executive director of A Better LA, was a speaker at the event and afterward talked about the impact of the event. "A Better LA is honored to have the support of Marshall students competing in the Challenge for Charity," Center said. "Their dollars and volunteer efforts help us keep our kids safe from violence, and have given our kids the opportunity to experience, through field trips and events, new worlds and new role models in a way they will cherish forever."

The gala was co-chaired by Mimi Lu and Fulya Guney. Jane Vaynerov, Jim Legeman and Tony Shin serve as 2011 co-chairs for USC Marshall’s Challenge for Charity. All of these students are MBA students in the Class of 2011.

Challenge for Charity (C4C) is a 26-year-old non-profit organization started at Stanford University that now boasts chapters at nine top West Coast MBA programs. The purpose of the organization is to develop future business leaders with a lifelong commitment to community involvement and social responsibility.