Craig Ehrlich '78 of the UCLA Foundation

Bruin Success

Craig is the former chairman of the GSMA, the world’s largest trade association for the mobile industry, a position that he held for seven years. He is also former chairman of Carmel Ventures Asia, a leading venture capital company. Craig currently serves as the lead independent director of Bharti Airtel, the world’s fourth-largest telecom company, and has sat on public boards in Hong Kong, Israel, India, the Philippines, and the United States.

In the Philippines, Craig was vice-chairman of publicly listed ISM and formerly a board member of publicly listed PhilWeb, the country’s leading gaming company. He served as chairman of Taiwan’s largest cable television company, kbro. Craig is also chairman and co-founder of Novare Technologies Inc., an onshoring and outsourcing software development company, based in Hong Kong that serves clients around Asia. He is also chairman of GTI Beijing, a virtual open platform that advocates cooperation among global mobile operators. Craig currently serves on the board of Israel-based company Lumos Global which provides mobile electricity to customers in Africa.

Craig has been involved in Hong Kong’s communications industry since he first settled in Hong Kong in 1987. He joined Hutchison Cablevision as managing director in October 1987 and was a founding member of the team that launched STAR TV, Asia’s first satellite-delivered multichannel television network. After four years with Hutchison Whampoa, he became the group operations director at Hutchison Telecommunications and was responsible for the company’s operations in 10 countries.

In 1993, Craig left the Hutchison group and established companies involved in the introduction of cable television and paging services. He sold these companies in September 1996 and started Hong Kong mobile operator. SUNDAY Communications Ltd. in November 1996. Craig was formerly a board member of ECI (NASDAQ) Hutchison Telecom Group, Roamware, and ITU Telecom. He is also a member of UCLA/Peking University Joint Research Institute Advisory Committee and former board chair as well as a founding member of Center for Global Management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. In 2015, Craig became a member of the UCLA Foundation Board and subsequently its Executive Committee. He established the Norma Ehrlich Scholarship Fund, which to date has helped 65 women attend UCLA, all from California public schools. He is also a former student body president at UCLA.

Craig holds a B.A. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, a master’s degree from Occidental College, and a postgraduate fellowship with the Coro Foundation. He resided in Hong Kong for 29 years and now splits his time between Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

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