SFSU students Jean-Michael Arraki and Jean Miguel Nacpil host this first social hour of the Fall 2022 semester for the alumni mentoring program. Mentors share their stories from their time at the University, offer insight into learnings over the course of their careers, and advise current students on making the most of their time at San Francisco State.

Mohamed Saber is a consultant and the host of the SFSU Gatorcast podcast. He received his Bachelor's degree in Finance from San Francisco State University.

Sina Shariati is a business analyst with a background in IT and data analytics. He receive his Master’s in Business Analytics from San Francisco State University.

Jeff Drimmer is a logistics expert with more than 30 years of management experience. He received his Bachelor’s in Business Administration from San Francisco State University.

Michael Dore is an attorney with extensive experience in information systems. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration from San Francisco State University.

Cristian Solis-Flores is an agent at New York life Insurance Company. He received his Bachelor's in Business Administration from San Francisco State University.

Ryan Smith is an Assistant Professor at SFSU’s Lam Family College of Business. He previously taught at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Jean-Michael Arraki is the President of the Mentorship Empowerment Club. He’s a Senior at San Francisco State University studying business information systems.

Jean Miguel Nacpil is the executive officer of the Mentorship Empowerment Club. He’s a Junior accounting student at San Francisco State University.

Sina on the SFSU Faculty

[24:10] The faculty is so professional. They were so helpful to me in finding my first job because when I was preparing my resume, I was reaching out to them.

I asked them, ‘Hey, could you please take a look at this resume and give me your feedback? ‘

Mohamed on the Culture at SFSU

[27:38] It built an underdog mentality. We're going up against big schools like Berkeley, Stanford or these other universities– Santa Clara, San Jose State… and I like that. I liked being the underdog.

Jeff on Applying for Jobs

[38:06] Don't ever get discouraged. You may be applying for dozens and dozens of companies and hearing nothing but knows, and knows, and knows. Don't let that get you down because that's part of life's experience, is how you deal with adversity, right?

It's very easy to deal with life when things are good. But people will always look and see how you performed in adversity.

Ryan Smith is an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University, focused on Hospitality and Tourism. Prior to San Francisco State, he taught in Hong Kong, South Korea, and at the University of Houston. Most importantly, he’s faculty lead for the SFSU Lam College of Business Mentorship Program. 

Learn more about how the program is impacting students today and how to get more involved.

On Alumni Generosity

[2:15] Alumni in general love giving back to the college. Basically they just wanna feel like they can do something, and our students need that support. And so, a lot of the students that have done this mentorship program have really benefited greatly in terms of improving their confidence level overall, as well as kind of getting ready for the workforce. And the alumni also love it.

On Participation Levels

[10:19] This semester, we have roughly 80 students. And from a mentor standpoint, we have about 55. Some mentors want to pair with more students, so the numbers work out pretty well for us at this point.

On Time Commitment

[11:07] What we ask mentors to dedicate is roughly around five hours. So, three different times over the course of the semester, with three outcomes that you're supposed to kind of run away with. Of course there are mentors, when you get paired with a student that you really want to help, they'll generally give more time.

On New Campus Initiatives

[16:07] Innovation and entrepreneurship, for example, are running kind of an incubator where students basically take a concept and bring it to life– make it to a point where you're selling a pitch deck, Like a Shark Tank-type series. And I think this year that was last year, and next year they're actually going to prototype.

On SFSU’s Student Training Restaurant

The biggest takeaway is just building confidence and talking to strangers and being able to deal with guests in general. At the end of the day, are you gonna carry plates when you go in the future? Most likely not only in your house, but, taking away those things, you don't really think about the fact that you're learning those valuable takeaways.

• Email
• Mentorship Program
• LinkedIn Profile

Today's guest is Manny Duenas - An SFSU Alum who I've been following for some time on LinkedIn. He is a University Recruiter at Intuit, a Top 25 Job Search Expert to Follow on LinkedIn, CEO at Career Doctor, and a professional speaker. He also helps untapped talent and first-generation students break into tech.

Hear more from Manny Duenas on the podcast today.

On his father’s wisdom

[2:04] He pulled me aside, and he was actually crying, and I'd never seen this man cry in my life– like this quiet, silent person, a very strong type of guy. When that happened, I thought I had gotten in trouble.

He pulled me aside and he told me, “I want you to be better than me,” and that really stuck with me. That really moved me at that time.

On role models

[4:16] I went to different colleges, and finally found a home at San Francisco State University and graduated. And there was nobody telling me how to manage my finances. There was nobody telling me whether I should take out student loans or not, or move here, move there, or doing homework, any of that stuff.

On his company, Career Doctor

[13:29] We're working over here and creating a database to curate the top free resources– that you can find on YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok– and curating it in a way that will help you take a step forward toward breaking into tech.

On “Hidden Jobs”

[15:19] They're not posted on career pages. You can't find them on Indeed. It's more so like networking, it's word of mouth. So the Hidden Job Market is born from that way of thinking. That these jobs are hidden, and a lot of it is found just through networking.

On Celebrating People’s Achievements

[22:42] It's kind of just pulling back the curtain and kind of humanizing a little bit more– because it's more than just the celebration. These people are all human and they all work hard to get to where they are today. So, we shed light on that.

• LinkedIn
• Career Doctor

Today’s episode features SFSU Alumni Bernard Mendoza. Bernard is a senior director of revenue operations at Informatica, and has more than 10 years of experience in finance, and sales operations at SaaS companies. 

His previous experience includes managing sales and revenue, operations, and finance at Conga, Upwork, Marketo, among other companies. Bernard has a Bachelor’s of Science in International Business from San Francisco State University and a professional certificate in Strategic Decision in Risk Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

He's also an advocate and member for the San Francisco State University Lam College of International Business council and the student mentoring program. He's also a program advisor to the Cal East Bay Customer Experience professional certificate program as well, where he provides strategic review of executive education for non-credit units, offering expert guidance to the faculty and students and promotes the program's goal of linking industry with academia.

On His Decision to Attend SFSU

[4:03] The reason I transferred to San Francisco State is because I looked into their international business program, their IB program. And I really liked it. I loved the courses that they had, and also the flexibility that San Francisco State gave for being able to take evening courses so that I could continue to work through my degree.

On His Work Ethic

[5:45] I had to pay for my own school, like most of us do. And I really learned not to take it for granted, because you're working very hard.

You're paying for it at the same time you're getting an opportunity to learn, and that kind of provided me the inspiration to say: the learning is what's gonna get me ahead.

On Choosing to Study International Business

[6:54] The buzzword back in those days was ‘multinational companies.’ Of course, today with the internet and with tech, most companies are multinational and international, and that's just fantastic. That, to me, reinforces why international business was a great major to have, because in addition to the marketing, the finance, all the regular business disciplines, international business provides a unique perspective to say: here's a company that can do business in other countries.

On Finding the Right Job

[10:56] I always look for those key things. How am I gonna be challenged? If I'm gonna be doing the same exact thing, same using the same exact skills, what am I gonna learn? And so then I have to outweigh that if that's gonna be something that's gonna be important to me in making that career choice.

On Working for a Startup

[11:48] I knew that working at a startup would give me a tremendous opportunity to learn a lot of different skills and make me more marketable. And that was true after I left the startup, because then I had much more opportunities available to me, and it made me more marketable. And so I knew that that was a key moment for me.

When you're starting out or when you're in you’re beginning phase of your career, I would highly recommend startups, if that's something that you like to do in terms of being challenged. In terms of learning new skills.

• Bernard Mendoza on Linkedin
• SFSU Business Mentors | Groups | 
• Bernard Mendoza - CSU - EAST BAY (csueastbay.edu)

Today's episode features Andrew Shamiya. A Senior Product Marketing Manager at Twitch. Prior to twitch he was a Product Marketing Manager at Facebook and a Management Consultant with Gartner. Andrew completed his Bachelor's in Finance at San Francisco State University and completed a Master's in Financial Analysis at USF.  

Hear more from Andrew on his role as a Product Marketing Manager, his methods to overcome impostor syndrome, lowering the learning curve, and mastering the skills needed to succeed in Product Marketing.

On shifting from Journalism to Business Administration in college

[00:06:48] I'm opting to major in Journalism, but I can see what my semester is going to look like. It has nothing to do with Journalism. So, I didn't feel like I was locking myself into anything. That was the first thing. And it didn't take long until I decided to shift toward business. Within that, I was interested in the field of finance. And that was entirely because I have a brother who went to Berkeley who went that path, and he went that route with his career. I've always looked up to him and thought he had done such a wonderful job. I want to be like that. And so, that's where I ended up going. I think that's what happens to a lot of people. You see someone else do something well, and you want to follow them.

On going into consulting right after college

[13:32.63] I spoke to people that I trusted, and everybody said going into a consulting role right out of college is super common and a super good way to step stone your way into something else later on. It is a good way to parlay whatever it is that you have into something that you will find more interesting after you get into your career. So, it's a good starting point, a good stepping stone. 

Overcoming Impostor Syndrome in the early years of his career

[00:18:07] Honestly, as you go through it, and as you start to level up your career and have conversations, and you're more often in rooms with more senior executives, you’ll start to see that everybody is the same. And then the other thing is, it all just comes down to experience. When you have bad experiences with people or with projects or anything, with subject matter material, it's really painful, and it sucks. But when the same thing happens eventually again, you’ll know how to react and deal with it. And the longer you stay in the industry doing the same thing, it all becomes pattern recognition, and then all becomes easier.

Advice for people who want to be a Product Marketing Manager

[28:25.48] I would say try and understand that Product Marketing is 50% product work and 50% marketing work. And I think if you over-rotate on one of the two things, you find yourself in trouble. You need both pieces to be a successful PMM because you have to be able to stand up to product managers who will disagree with you about things, and you have to be able to set the marketing strategy for a product because that is your responsibility. 

The only way to do that is to make sure that you understand the product. Make sure that you're a part of the process that helps create the product so that you're building toward a user need, not like a user want or something that is competitor-focused, but you're solving a problem for your customer.

Advice for SFSU students and alumni

[32:13.45] A couple of things. Number one, it's really hard to know what you want to do while in school. And so, my advice would be to go for options that give you the most options because I think early on you just have no clue. Don't feel locked in stuff because you just don't know; you might try it and not like it, and that is so okay. The most okay thing ever. 

The second thing is, if you do have imposter syndrome, you just learn how to manage it to a certain extent. It shouldn't stop you from trying to do whatever it is that you want to do. You should totally still go for it.

• Andrew Shamiya on LinkedIn

In this episode, we talk to Todd Feldman, professor at San Francisco State University. We discuss a number of Fintech endeavors, including how Fintech works in the villages of Malawi, how cryptocurrency works, and the benefits and risks of investing in digital coins.

Todd also shares the challenges of incorporating new and practical curriculum at universities and why it should be redesigned to better equip the students for a rapidly changing financial world.

Todd also serves as the FinTech Initiative's Director. He is also a member of the SFSU endowment committee and advisor to the student investment fund.

Todd holds a Ph.D. in International Finance and Economics from UC Santa Cruz and, under the direction of Dan Friedman, is one of the pioneers of experimental economics.

[00:03:49] A lot is going on in Africa, especially with mobile payments. We've toured different projects in Malawi, one of the projects we went to visit and learned in-depth as we followed people around. So it was a women's initiative, essentially the women in the village created their own little bank, little savings, and loan operation. They're able to collect a certain amount of money and loan that money out to people in their village. Through that cooperative of the women, they were able to then afford to pay the school fees for their children and kind of live off the money from just doing that. 

Because of the village and everyone knows each other, the default rate was pretty low, so they never went outside the village, always inside the village. And that was pretty amazing just to watch the women. Unfortunately, the men who were fishing, it was their main occupation, essentially would spend their money on alcohol. And so the women had to take care of the children and then they formed this savings and loan operation and were able to pay for other children to go to school. 

[00:20:51] It takes a lot of effort to create a course. And once it's created there's little incentive to update it or to change it, and this happens at a lot of universities and therefore a lot of curriculum just gets stale. And that can be okay if the world doesn't change too much. But now we're in this pivotal point of the world-changing dramatically and therefore, teaching the old curriculum would not be fair to students. I think we have to provide students with the skill sets and kind of knowledge to be successful in their careers. It is a good time to warrant an overview of our curriculum. I see a lot of students wanting more practical classes, how to do financial planning, and how to navigate cryptocurrency investing.

• LinkedIn

What will you achieve if you can break through diversity gap barriers? For Sowmya Chandrasekaran, it's getting an AI Engineer role at Lockheed Martin, an aerospace and technology corporation. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a Business Management degree and a minor in Computer Science and Mandarin.

As a member of student organizations such as Providing Opportunities for Women and Girls Who Code, Sowmya is aware that not everyone interested to learn coding enjoys the supportive environment she experienced at SFSU— especially young women. 

Tune in to know more about Sowmya's efforts in helping young women get exposed to technology as early as possible and how she breaks diversity gaps in a male-dominated industry.

Why is it important to have women and people of color in leadership roles? 

[00:07:45] My sister is working on her PhD at UC Berkeley in bioengineering. That is a field where you don't necessarily see a lot of women of color sitting at the table or heading those meetings. And being able to see a version of yourself in a position of leadership or influence, that's very supportive, right? You know that there is someone like you out there leading certain efforts, and then imagine not seeing that, as a matter of fact, you might feel unsupported because of certain non-inclusive environments or it's just the nature of the team. I want to become that person that eventually offers support to another person like myself, another young woman like myself, that's really empowering.

Applications of a programming language in business?

[00:71:14] When you have this tool that's coding in your hands, you can do whatever you want. You can become that entrepreneur. You don't have to rely on some web developer to come and make you a website and think about the things they might want for you. You can make whatever you want, which is amazing and innovative, and puts you further out, higher on the leaderboard, right? Being able to showcase what you can do that's different from what others are currently doing.

• Sowmya on LinkedIn
• Girls Who Code