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Where Are They Now: Jonathan Dotan

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Jonathan Dotan appeared in the inaugural edition of the College Report magazine in 2004 in an article highlighting his internship in war-torn Bosnia. The College recently caught up with Dotan to find out about his post-graduation endeavors and career. jd_sv2

Jonathan Dotan ’03 has three great passions: technology, film and international affairs. By connecting the dots between the three fields, Dotan has found a way to build an exciting career.

Dotan is currently a co-producer and lead technical advisor for HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” which wrapped its third season in June. His work helps to ensure that the show, whose storyline revolves around modern compression technology and computer science, is accurate in its dialogue and representation of the tech industry.

“I’m drawing from my own experience working in tech and film to make sure that the show, which is really dependent on accuracy, remains authentic,” Dotan said.

Dotan credits UCLA with laying the foundation for his future career. He created his own major, Information Policy, through the UCLA honors program, integrating coursework from the College, UCLA Law School, Theatre, Film & Television, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and UCLA Anderson School of Management. He said having the freedom to take a wide spectrum of courses across disciplines allowed him to graduate with a degree that prepared him perfectly for the future.

However, Dotan said even more vital than the classes he took at UCLA were the people he met there and the valuable friendships that emerged. He teamed up with classmate Robert Davari to enter the Anderson WWW Challenge in 2000, a campus-wide competition challenging students to create solutions to real consulting and technology problems. The two won first place and took their partnership into the real world. Today, Dotan serves as a consultant for Davari’s live event ticket app, Tixr.

He has particularly fond memories of his close mentor Jennifer Wilson, former assistant vice provost for honors in the UCLA College. He said her wisdom and approach to learning have stayed with him.

“She taught me to go the more unconventional path, which is an interdisciplinary path,” Dotan said. “The honors program prides itself on working across departments and disciplines, and I can tell you that my career is almost entirely related to the intersection between the arts and sciences.”

Another piece of advice she gave him, he said, was to pursue work that would bring about social change.

During their fourth year, Dotan and another student traveled to Bosnia as interns on a year-long war crimes project through the United Nations, thanks to funding from the honors program and UCLA’s Burkle International Institute. There, he drafted indictment recommendations to the State Court to charge three Bosnian government officials, ultimately achieving a 100% conviction rate.

“It was the largest corruption case in the Balkans and we helped crack it while we were just students at UCLA,” Dotan said. “It was some of the most meaningful work I’ve ever done.”

After graduating with a master’s in International Relations from Oxford University, Dotan travelled to 30 countries as an envoy for the Motion Picture Association of America. He worked on behalf of the major U.S. studios to engage with foreign film industries and governments to develop local markets and ensure fair market access. On a trip to India, he formed a relationship with India’s maverick retail mogul, Kishore Biyani, who ended up appointing Dotan to run his investments in film and technology.

Transplanted to India for the next five years, Dotan worked on dozens of ventures and notably one of the most-watched TV shows in the country’s history, “Satyamev Jayate” (Truth Alone Prevails), which reached an audience of more than 500 million people. Starring one of India’s most popular actors, Aamir Khan, the talk show brought to light Indian social issues such as inter-caste marriage and domestic violence. Dotan developed a social media platform to allow viewers to submit their own stories to the show.

“In two hours every Sunday morning, we brought people together to put a face on the most taboo issues in India society,” Dotan said. “We explained through stories of hope how people can overcome social ills.”

According to Dotan, the show, combined with the digital platform’s 15 million user stories and 1 billion impressions, became a powerful means to lobby Indian government, and 12 new laws—including the first child abuse law in the country—were enacted.

When he returned to the U.S. in 2013, he was invited to work with producers Mike Judge (“King of the Hill”) and Alec Berg (“Seinfeld”).

“When we sat down to talk about ‘Silicon Valley,’ I realized this was a really special opportunity to develop a show in a different way,” Dotan said. “While it’s primarily a half-hour comedy, the show is also a unique platform to use satire to discuss contemporary issues tech startups face in this golden age.”

Dotan enlists the brainpower of over 200 tech specialists to advise every episode of the show. His TV think-tank includes a team of Stanford researchers who specialize in compression technology and even an intrepid team of UCLA law students who build out pivotal legal plot lines.

Now at work on season four, Dotan said he never could have imagined working on a hit TV show – domestically or internationally – while he was a student more than a decade ago. But what he did discover at UCLA, he said, was the importance of being curious and willing to collaborate.

“The key is simply to ask good questions. People in the world are passionate about solving problems, and if you can bring innovation and dedication to your career, that type of talent will take you farther than you could ever dream,” he said.

Social Science students travel the globe in the name of research

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UCLA Geography and Political Science student Logan Linnane isn’t having a typical summer.

The fourth-year student is spending his break in the communities that border the Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp in Northern Thailand, where a diverse group of international organizations provides aid to Karenni refugees from Myanmar.

The recipient of an Irving and Jean Stone Research Award, Linnane is conducting original research on the vocational environmental education programs made available to refugees by aid organizations. The field work is enabling him to explore the effectiveness of these environmental education programs from the perspectives of those they seek to serve.

This kind of opportunity is a key facet of a revolution unfolding within higher educational practice that Honors Program Assistant Vice Provost G. Jennifer Wilson characterizes as “teaching people to become the thing you want them to learn, rather than telling them what you want them to learn.”

While the UCLA College Honors Program distributes its summer stipends to 22 honors students throughout the College, Wilson says that students in the social sciences are particularly well prepared by their faculty to write and conduct compelling research proposals. They make up a large proportion of grantees each year. Seven students traveled abroad this year, including to Iran, China and Germany.

While Linnane’s research is connected to his Honors Thesis, he’s also thinking of the broader impact.  He hopes that his work “will serve as a potential resource for environmental organizations as they continue to adjust and improve the curricula for programs that serve communities of displaced people.”

Professor Eric Sheppard, Linnane’s faculty advisor in the Geography Department, said the research his student is doing this summer is furthering Western scholars’ understanding of Myanmar and the topic of refugees in general.

Recipients must be part of the College Honors Program or a departmental honors program. Preparation is intense: students work closely with a faculty advisor and are required to gain Internal Review Board approval, a process most students don’t encounter until the graduate level.

But the hard work is worth it.

“It’s easy to sit on campus and dream about working in the developing world, but planning a project and living amongst the communities you strive to work with is truly the only way to even remotely understand what a career in development entails,” Linnane said.

Sheppard personally meets with his undergraduate researchers several times to help them develop appropriate research questions and methodologies.

“We talk about whether they need language skills and how to acquire these,” he said. “We discuss the country itself so they appreciate what they will be faced with. We set up a procedure for adjusting the research design if necessary. I also discuss with them basic travel preparations such as vaccinations, medicines to have with them, travel insurance, and what to do in an emergency.”

Honors Program research stipends are supported by four private donors. Despite this generous support, the need is growing as global knowledge becomes increasingly important.

“All undergraduates need to broaden their understanding of and perspective on the world if they are to become thoughtful world citizens,” Sheppard said. “The opportunity to do research on the ground, to be thrown into a situation where you work with locals and learn their views, is a vital opportunity that should be utilized more than it is.”