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Sitting at the helm of her own international trade company, Mercatura Global, Nicole àBeckett (’15), a recipient of the 2014 John Wooden Leadership Fellowship, truly reflects the “global” in the John Wooden Global Leadership Award. The proceeds from the award dinner, which takes place on November 17, help fund the fellowship.

Before founding Mercatura, a strategic advisory firm that assists small and mid-sized businesses in growing their overseas markets, àBeckett studied in Beijing and then led strategy and development for myfab.com in Shanghai. A native Angeleno, she also served as the senior director of international trade in the administration of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and current Mayor Eric Garcetti, supporting engagement of L.A. companies in international market expansion and attracting foreign direct investment to the city, specifically through the Mayoral Trade Mission to Mexico last March.

In that role, she identified and assembled key businesses that aligned with the mission of exploring growth opportunities for telecommunications and other technologies. “Mexico is opening up its energy sector and L.A. is home to many viable tech companies and services,” àBeckett says. “So we promoted L.A. as a hub of tech innovation in clean energy.”

Thus, with ten years of broad international experience in cross-border strategy, trade and operations development focusing on Asia and Latin America, she launched a company that she hopes will facilitate export opportunities for U.S. companies (a mere 1% of America’s 30 million companies export, according to the Department of Commerce ), as well as attract overseas business to Los Angeles. In particular, she’s committed to targeting women-owned and –led businesses to involve in global markets.

She possesses valuable expertise in Chinese relations that she knows can help connect women globally, with the possibility to create jobs. “We need more women role models, mentors and leaders, in finance especially,” she observes. “And I’d like to instill in other women the great value of taking calculated risks in business.”

In what she refers to as her “spare time,” àBeckett produces a Mandarin-language reality Web series called Looking for Angels, which portrays the ups and downs of life in Los Angeles for young-adult overseas Chinese; the show debuts this month. She was inspired to create a contemporary drama with high production values, partly to “update” Chinese-language entertainment for both U.S. and China audiences. But as an investment, it also presents opportunities for marketing of brands and retailers with an interest in exposure to a young audience.

àBeckett leads with a balance of authority and humility. A self-described “huge John Wooden fan,” she took a sports psychology class just so she could learn more about him. She calls him “the very definition of success” and adds that if she ever earns the same level of adoration, she hopes she’ll be regarded as humble and possessing empathy, like Coach.