Episode #39: In this last episode of the OneHaas current student podcast, we're joined by our Here@Haas host Paulina Lee and OneHaas host Sean Li. This episode will mark the transition of the OneHaas podcast into the Alumni Podcast. 

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

 

Episode #38: Host Sean Li talks to current MBA student Ana Simones. They discuss the multiple careers and degrees she had before starting at Haas, how she’s making the most of her time (even with 3 teenage kids!), and what she’s up to in quarantine. 

Episode Highlights: 

• Ana speaks six languages and studied linguistics for her undergraduate and Master's degrees.
• She went on to start her Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• She pivoted into storytelling and film because that’s what she always had a passion for
• Launched her own video production business in the US
• She moved to the Bay Area and got back into the excitement of AI and NLP
• Ana shares some examples of where AI is headed next and the potential implications
• She tells us why the Haas community is so impactful for her
• Ana shares with us all the international trips she took through the EWMBA program from Paris to Uganda, to being a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for Seminar in Business (SIB) Brasil

3 Key Takeaways: 

1. Fully immerse yourself into the program
2. Take advantage of all the international study abroad opportunities
3. Apply to become a graduate student instructor if you have the opportunity

Quotables:

• “It’s not just the interactions now but the people [we meet] are going to be in our lives for the rest of our lives.” - Ana Simoes
• “GSI'ing gives you an opportunity to meet people across many years and also allows you to interact with professors on a different level.” - Ana Simoes
• “Haas has so much to offer that I feel like I could be here for another five years and still be doing things that are new.” - Ana Simoes 

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #37: Today we're joined by Arthur Tong, EWMBA '20. We recorded this episode about a year ago near the end of the second year of our program but what Arthur has to share in this episode is as on point at that time, as it is today. Having stood the tests of time, he provides excellent advice and guidance for current, incoming, and prospective students.

Episode Highlights:

• Arthur shares what brought him to Haas
• He has an affinity for Design Thinking shared with his sister who went to the D-School at Stanford
• Arthur explains what Design Thinking is, its importance, and the thought leaders at Haas in this space, including Clark Kellogg
• Haas fosters a choose-your-adventure environment
• Arthur explains how he's leveraged the MBA for networking outside of Haas
• He also shares with us the industry leaders he's exposed to on campus through the club events and speaker series
• One of his favorite clubs and one he finds most relevant for business is the Improv Club and he shares why

3 Key Points:

1. Maximize your time and network at Haas
2. Be proactive about uncovering your interests and explore all that Haas has to offer
3. Treat the MBA like a personal journey

Tweetable Quotes

• “Everybody loves learning. Everybody loves knowing things, but people hate being educated.../...but if you can mix education with entertainment it's a huge value-add.” –Arthur Tong
• “Treat this [MBA] like a personal journey. I think this would be a wasted opportunity if you walked out the same person you walked in.” –Arthur Tong

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #35: In the 35th episode of OneHaas, co-hosts Sean and Ray talk to current EWMBA student Finley Harckham (‘22). They discuss his background & interest in policymaking, commuting to Berkeley from LA, and making the most of the Haas community’s knowledge and expertise.

Episode Highlights:

• Finley grew up in Greenwich, CT, and had initial interest in public policy, working on a Congressional campaign immediately out of college.
• Later, Finley interned for Ecologic Solutions, a startup making ecologically-friendly cleaning products. He started in Sales and Service, became an account manager, and eventually moved into business development.
• Now Finley is a manager at Compass, a startup real estate technology company. He has been able to apply several learnings from classes at Haas in his current role. 
• Finley makes the most out of his commute by working half-day Fridays and turning LAX into his remote office for a few hours instead of rushing in LA traffic.
• Finley believes policy challenges the status quo by tackling larger problems and continuing to make things better around us
• Instead of trying to solve the problem of the influence that money and business have on politics, Finley thought he would try to influence businesses for the greater good so they influence politics in a better way.
• Finley attended the BERC Energy Summit recently to learn more about renewable energy and the sectors it affects.
• Finley is looking forward to getting to learning more about renewable energy. He would also like to get to know his classmates at a deeper level because the real value beyond education is in the community.

3 Key Points:

1. Don’t discount what you can teach others and what you can learn from others.
2. Having a business school at Berkeley embodies the Haas principle of challenging the status quo.
3. Your cohort is as much a resource as your education.

Tweetable Quotes 

• “I think the most exciting thing that I’ve realized is that there really is a place at the school for all the students to maximize their own strengths and to help teach others and learn from others based on their other strengths.”
• “Policy gives you a space to keep changing things and always to make the place, this earth, more efficient.”
• “If you leverage the Haas community, naturally all of the other goals in terms of career, understanding the material, are all going to fall in place.”

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #34: In this 34th episode of OneHaas, hosts Sean and Ray talk to current EWMBA student Jarrett Wright (‘22). They discuss his upbringing, background in real estate, his time in prison, and how he has been making the most of his time at Haas.

Episode Highlights:

• Jarrett also went to Berkeley for his undergrad and majored in Rhetoric. He knew from the start that he eventually wanted an MBA.
• He founded a real estate company when he was 19 and earned his first million within 30 months, ran the company for about a decade, but was wiped out in the 2008 crash.
• In his desperation to avoid financial ruin, he made choices that landed him in federal prison for 18 months.
• While living in a halfway house, he went back to school and worked with no computer, writing essays on his cell phone and graduated with a 3.98 GPA.
• Jarrett began the Umoja-UBAKA community for black students on campus at Laney College.
• Jarrett knew Haas was the right fit for him because of the empathy and values embedded in the curriculum. He is using his time at Haas to identify/fill gaps in his weaknesses, as well as articulating his strengths.
• Jarrett has been making extensive use of the CMG department (Career Management Group) to leverage the infrastructure and network at Haas.
• Jarrett founded and is currently the CEO of a company called Higher Rewards to give branded credit cards to the constituents of smaller community organizations and religious groups to compensate for the downturn in donations they’re seeing.

3 Key Points:

1. You don’t need to have it all figured out before coming in. Over 40% of incoming students classify themselves as explorers, whose goals are to find their “north star”.
2. Haas students are eager to share their knowledge and experience with each other, and this openness and generosity is reflected both inside and outside the classroom.
3. Make use of your cohort, other cohorts, and any/all resources on campus; there are over 1,500 MBA students between the different classes/programs and plenty of faculty/staff. The MBA is what you make of it.

Tweetable Quotes

• “If you ask me what’s your favorite seasoning & all I know is salt or pepper, then I’m either gonna pick salt or pepper. But what if I don’t know about sriracha or curry? I don't know to pick these things as options. That’s been my campaign all the way through.” –Jarrett Wright
• “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.” –Jarrett Wright

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #33: Host Sean Li talks to MBA student Steffi Decker (‘20). They discuss her background in digital marketing for political campaigns, how she ended up at Haas, and how to reflect, identify your goals, and adjust how you spend your time accordingly.

Episode Highlights:

• Steffi built and ran a digital marketing agency in DC focused on policy and advocacy back in the late 2000s when nobody but the young upstarts knew anything about digital.
• During the 2010 campaign, a big local company saw their digital political ads and it landed them their first corporate client.
• Steffi and her partners grew the firm to 25-30 people and then worked with her colleagues over 2 years on a transition plan for her to leave the company.
• Between leaving the company and starting at Haas, she traveled alone for months, biking up the coast of Thailand, and exploring Laos and other countries.
• Steffi learned to be self-directed and determine what would make her happy and fulfilled.
• You don’t have to travel to Thailand alone for three months to figure it out; each week, reflect on which experiences you had that you found meaning and value in, and adjust accordingly.
• She knew very little about business school and didn’t know anyone who had gone to business school because she worked in politics, but she doesn’t recommend going into it that uninformed.
• Steffi identified what tangible things she wanted to get out of her time at Haas and deliberately oriented her time around those things; if she’s asked to do something and she can’t see how it moves her towards one of those goals, she doesn’t do it.
• Haas could do better at prioritizing diversity and representation in the student body, in faculty, in the curriculum, and everywhere.
• Steffi interned at New Media Ventures, a partisan non-profit investor that invests in progressive civic tech and political organizing tools.
• She’s driven to help people at the biggest scale possible.

 

3 Key Points:

1. Business school is more demanding than Steffi anticipated; it is not a decision to take lightly.
2. Reflecting on your experiences is an important way of learning what’s important to you and how to align your life more in that direction.
3. Identifying your goals is the first step towards knowing how to spend your time.

 

Tweetable Quotes

• “Having all that space and time helped me learn to be really self-directed and have to look deeply inside of myself and think about what would give me meaning and joy and purpose every day.” –Steffi Decker
• “I reflected, what do I want to walk away from this institution with? And I identified those and wrote those down. And that enabled me to start organizing my time towards those.” –Steffi Decker

 

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #32: Host Sean Li talks to David Corfield FTMBA'19. They discuss his company LifeWork, how he became an entrepreneur and ended up at Haas, how business skills are transferable across industries, and more.

Episode Highlights:

• David grew up in Essex, about an hour outside of London, and began his entrepreneurial experience with a company called Folder Monkey that created custom folder systems for students, but it quickly got shut down.
• In his first year at McKinsey, he was thrown feet first into the fray, but it was also his only exposure to the business world prior to pursuing his MBA.
• David pursued his MBA in California because of its proximity to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• David wants to be able to see the tangible impact of his work.
• The biggest pain point for freelancers that David talked to is income insecurity.
• LifeWork aims to ease payment issues that freelancers encounter and wants to provide, essentially, an HR department or back-office support for freelancers.
• LifeWork differs from other platforms like Upwork or Fiverr because it is client-focused instead of being marketplace driven.
• One of LifeWork’s core values is transparency.
• You shouldn’t be afraid to share your ideas; if someone else takes it and executes it, it just proves that you have good ideas.

3 Key Points:

1. As a freelancer in any industry, you need to have some business skills.
2. People now value autonomy and purpose in their work more than they value stability.
3. Don’t hoard your ideas, but share them for the sake of solving problems.

Tweetable Quotes

• “The entrepreneurial spark that I knew I had was starting to be squashed by these big, slow-moving companies and our role to advise them and never actually see that impact.” –David Corfield
• “There is no solution right now that enables flexibility, which is obviously why people become freelancers in the first place, and also provide security.” –David Corfield
• “I think I’d say to any student anywhere that is in close proximity to a business school, it is the perfect time to start something.” –David Corfield

Resources Mentioned: 

• Email Sean: [email protected] 
• https://www.lifeworkonline.com/
• David Corfield
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidjcorfield
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcorfield
• Medium: https://medium.com/@david_corfield

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #31: Jason Syu, EWMBA ’19, was born in the US and due to family reasons grew up in Taiwan for the majority of his formative years. He moved back to the US in high school and received his degree in Electrical Engineering at Ohio State University. After college, Jason went on to work for Texas Instruments starting in manufacturing and acquisitions, and later in automotive semiconductors, specifically in Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS). He then transitioned into his current role as a Hard Test Engineer at Lyft in the Autonomous Vehicle Division. Jason shares with us how he decided to pursue an MBA to network with like-minded individuals interested in building businesses. We hear a little about his start-up experiences during his time at Haas, including launching a caffeinated chewing gum. 

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #30: Samantha Tannor (FTMBA ’20) joins us today to talk about her career in food, the FTMBA experience, and Tannor’s Tea, her own plant-based superfood concentrate company. Sam graduated from college at USC and went into the grocery industry as a District Manager at ALDI, a low-cost grocery chain. She talks about how that experience helped prepare her for life as an entrepreneur, how Haas has helped, and her love for matcha. We get to hear some fascinating details on Tannor’s Tea around product development, including how she found a food scientist to help refine the product taste. Furthermore, Sam is one of the co-presidents for Food@Haas and speaks about incorporating Food Summit into Career Week, and how Food@Haas is a blend of both a career-focused and social club here at Haas.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #29: Double Bear Dana Zhang, EWMBA ’21, shares with us her upbringing from China to LA. She then went on to study economics for her undergraduate degree at Berkeley and joined Wells Fargo early in her career as a relationship manager for international banking partnerships. Dana then continued on to Lending Club in a similar capacity helping Lending Club pivot from a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending service to connecting with banking institutions to offer more lending services for clients. We delve into why Dana decided to come back to Berkeley for her MBA when many of us thought we were done with school after our Bachelor degree. Dana shares with us one of her most memorable and influential classes, Distinguished Teaching Fellow Peter Goodson’s Turnarounds class, and how that influenced her career trajectory into investment banking. We continue on to chat about how unique and supportive the Berkeley Haas Career Management Group is in being inclusive with Evening and Weekend students for on-campus recruiting. We finish on her tips for prospective students after spending 3 semester at Haas.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations