Meet Your Instructors

Cyrus Aram brings over 20 years of private and public sector experience in the areas of customer strategy, business transformation, planning, program, change and quality management. He has domain-level expertise in customer strategy, business process transformation, lean sigma, program and change management, performance management, and business controls and thought leadership.

Aram has more than 18+ years of experience working with many Fortune 100 business and public sector companies on strategy development and implementation, including EDS, GM, VSP, HP and Blue Shield of California. He has demonstrated success in leading a variety of complex business programs and initiatives across different industry functions and on a global, national and regional basis. He has over 10 years of experience directing large customer transformation efforts, including leading all efforts to complete the largest technology merger in corporate U.S. history. Enterprise initiatives led by Aram have delivered hundreds of millions in savings and increased revenue by as much as 30%.

For the past four years, Aram has served as CEO for Unleashing Leaders in the Sacramento area of California. Recently, Unleashing Leaders was recognized by the Sacramento Business Journal as the eighth fastest growing company headquartered in the Sacramento region over the last three years. While the pandemic put a new twist on their mission to “inspire an epidemic of leadership and integrity”, Unleashing Leaders strives to make their communities better places to live, work, and play.

Aram earned his MBA from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and his B.A. in English, political science and philosophy from UC Davis. He also received his Six Sigma Master Black Belt from the American Society for Quality and his Black Belt certification and Project Management Professional certificate from the Project Management Institute.

Julie Petersen brings over 10 years of experience in business analytics, process improvement and business problem-solving in both healthcare and education to the Graduate School of Management. In addition to being a GSM alum, she holds a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt from the American Society of Quality.

Petersen is a lead business analyst at Blue Shield of California in the commercial markets space, where she helps enable sales strategy by providing high-level data and business analyses and insights to aid in making smart, strategic decisions and expanding Blue Shield’s footprint in California.

She is also a lecturer for the online MBA program, teaching students how to analyze data and use it to solve a variety of business problems.

Carrie Rasmussen has more than 20 years of experience as a trusted advisor organizing business operations, leading teams through change management efforts, developing and managing employee engagement, and creating meaningful stakeholder and client relationships. Using a wide range of skills from process engineering and executive storytelling, she has been able to enable savings of more than $20 million across the enterprise.

As a seasoned “utility player,” Rasmussen is frequently called the “Jane of All Trades” at any organization she works. She has the unique ability to quickly learn new processes and programs and can then leverage that knowledge to help organizations identify where improvements can be made.

Rasmussen has earned her Project Management Professional certificate from the Project Management Institute.

Huy Tran brings over 15 years of public and private sector experience in the areas of technology leadership, business transformation, continuous improvement, project management and data analytics. He has a career that spans higher education, healthcare and now Fortune 500 technology.

Tran focuses on using data to drive decision making, improve processes and enhance the customer experience. He has led highly technical cross-functional teams to implement global projects focusing on strategic change and best practices.

Tran earned his MBA from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and his B.S. in computer engineering from UC Davis. He is also a Certified Six Sigma Green Belt from the American Society of Quality.