AMG Board Spotlight - Carla Gonzalez
Q&A with Carla Gonzalez
Q. What is your name, title, and department?
Carla Gonzalez, OAST Manager, Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine
Q. How did you get started at UCLA (and how long ago)? What do you see as your greatest accomplishments?
I started my UCLA journey in January 2004, 20 years ago, as a lab assistant in Urology and Pediatric Oncology where I had the pleasure of learning about the meaningful work that our researchers conduct. In 2006, I transferred to Perioperative Services where my administrative career began, and gained analytical experience. I then transferred to my home department, Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine in 2013 where I work with a team focused on faculty support and program management. My greatest accomplishment in my role is supporting my team. At UCLA, it has been serving on the HEDI La Comunidad affinity group, as a board member with AMG, and most recently, being awarded a DGSOM Cultural North Star grant with my affinity group.
Q. What advice would you share with individuals who seek to further develop their career at UCLA?
The best piece of advice I can share is to get involved. There are many opportunities at UCLA and a need to represent administrative staff in all platforms. Getting involved in affinity groups, volunteer work, and professional groups like AMG and Staff Assembly opens doors that you don’t anticipate. Through the work in those settings, we grow our professional network, learn new skill sets, gain mentors and sponsors, widen our perspectives, and in some cases discover our professional passion or identity.
Q. What is the best advice you ever received? What do you consider as one of the most important skills to succeed at UCLA?
The best piece of advice I received was to approach “failures” as opportunities. Many of us focus on our failures with a sense of shame and often dwell on those mistakes. That advice challenged me to reframe my thinking into a solution-oriented mindset, become a better manager, acknowledge the positives during challenging times, and develop “better” practices. A skill that I consider important to succeed at UCLA is to remain curious, always. UCLA needs staff to ask questions, genuinely participate in surveys, share our ideas and what we need and why, and have them consider a new way of doing things that makes things better for us, our patients, and our students. And if it doesn’t stick now, try again later – timing can make a difference.
