Onehaas

 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 forLaunched her own video production business in the USShe moved to the Bay Area and got back into the excitement of AI and NLPAna shares some examples of where AI is headed next and the potential implicationsShe tells us why the Haas community is so impactful for herAna 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) Brasil3 Key Takeaways: Ful

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 HaasHe has an affinity for Design Thinking shared with his sister who went to the D-School at StanfordArthur explains what Design Thinking is, its importance, and the thought leaders at Haas in this space, including Clark KelloggHaas fosters a choose-your-adventure environmentArthur explains how he's leveraged the MBA for networking outside of HaasHe also shares with us the industry leaders he's exposed to on campus through the club events and speaker seriesOne of his favorite clubs and one he finds most relevant for business is the Improv Club and he shares why3 Key Points:Maximize your

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 ta

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

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 mont

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

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

Episode #28: Having been passed the torch from his predecessors to make Haas more Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive, Evan Wright FTMBA ’20, shares with us the importance of these initiatives at Haas and beyond. Evan starts his humble roots, born and raised, in Southeast Washington D.C. He was educated in the DC public school system until 9th grade when he received a full scholarship to attend the well-known Sidwell Friends School, a school attended by the likes of children of the President of the United States (Obama, Clinton, Roosevelt). He shares with us what it was like to go from a public school with predominantly underrepresented minorities (URM) to one of the most prestigious schools in the nation but predominantly white, and the shocks he experienced those formative years of his life. After high school, he went on to study Biomedical Engineering at Brown University. After Brown, we hear about his experiences from Asia to DC to Chicago to Japan and more. Evan then joins us at Haas and serves as the VP o

Episode #27: Harry Goldberg, MBA/MPH ’20, hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied biology at Emory University and joined Deloitte as a strategy consultant in healthcare after graduating. Healthcare has been a big part of his life, leading him to internships in HealthTech VC and Verily - an Alphabet subsidiary. His interests also pushed him towards pursuing the intensive dual degree Masters in Business Administration and Masters in Public Health program. Harry shares with us what the dual degree program is like and the wealth of opportunities he’s been able to tap into at Berkeley Haas. We dive into topics such as healthcare AI to get a glimpse of how artificial intelligence and machine learning may shape our future. He further shares his experiences as Co-President of Haas Venture Fellows, VP of Haas InSite Venture Fellows, VP of Haas Healthcare Association, and more.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #26: Austin Yoder, EWMBA '21, was born in New York but grew up in Hong Kong and Jakarta. He studied Chinese at Georgetown University and proceeded to move to Taiwan shortly after graduating to start a tea company amongst other entrepreneurial endeavors. Austin currently works at the Stanford Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) where his team puts out research reports on Search Funds. Check it out here! Austin continues to pursue his passion for entrepreneurship and came to Berkeley Haas to learn how to be a better business operator. He shares with us the benefits of the MBA education and how it can complement the Search Fund model for budding first-time entrepreneurs.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #25: Konrad Kennedy (FTMBA '20) is visiting Haas for the semester on an exchange from the ESADE MBA program in Barcelona where he is the president of the Entrepreneurship Club. Konrad graduated from Warwick University in the UK and subsequently started his career in FinTech in London. After the first startup he joined was acquired by Apple he joined Barclays' leadership rotational program where he focused on product management and helped launch the world's biggest bank-run FinTech community. In the podcast, we discuss how Konrad has built an international career for himself, his interest in social entrepreneurship, what made him choose Haas for his exchange program and the differences between European and American MBA programs. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Episode #24: Bree Jenkins, industrial engineer extraordinaire, of the FTMBA ’19 class starts from humble roots in the Midwest. She later moved to Georgia with her family to attend high school and college at Georgia Tech. She pursued her passion for math and science which lead her to a career in industrial engineering. Bree fires up while talking about her work at Disney World and for the Disney Cruise Lines in Florida, where she helped manage everything from the logistics of thousands of costumes to the planning of cruise ship renovations. We then talk about the 900-lb gorilla in the room, how despite diversity efforts at Haas and through programs such as the Consortium, there is still a severe underrepresentation of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students in MBA programs. Bree speaks candidly about the courage required to join a program where you are severely underrepresented and is unreflective of the general population. I ask her on advice for underrepresented students who may be sitting on the fence

Episode #23: Dilip Patel EWMBA ’20 immigrated from Mumbai (Bombay), India five years ago as a Fractal Analytics Data Science Engineer. He started his career working in the financial industry for big banks like Citi and Credit Suisse. We hear how Dilip transitioned from data science to product management during his time at Salesforce. We learn about product management in the perspective of what you’re building, and most importantly why you’re building it, and whether there’s a real business case. We uncover that entrepreneurship was his driving motivation toward a career in Product Management. He shares with us some advice on how to best transition internally into a product management role, pre-MBA, for engineers currently working in tech companies. Dilip embodies our student always motto as he sought out courses while working, such as Pragmatic Marketing through the Pragmatic Institute. We learn about what brings Dilip to Haas even after having secured a Product Management role at Groupon. Dilip talks a littl

Episode #22: We are joined by Adam Brudnick of the FTMBA ’19 program. In this episode, he shares with us what initially drew him to a career in consulting at McKinsey and ultimately to Berkeley Haas. Back in high school, He was inspired to work at the intersection of science and business after watching An Inconvenient Truth which led him to apply to Wesleyan University, well known for its emphasis in arts and sciences. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, Economics, and Music and joined McKinsey after a summer internship at the firm. Adam went on to join the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to further his career in learning how to accelerate the deployment of technologies to solve rising climate challenges. We hear a brief history of the New York Power Authority, how the public-benefit corporation is run by the state, and how Adam helped NYPA focus on initiatives with multiplier effects that pay economic dividends. We delve into how the multiplier effect works and how we should think about crea

Episode #21: Sommelier and Entrepreneur, Andres Martell EWMBA '19, started off in the United States Marine Corps. Before launching his Vin Ambassador business in the Bay Area, he recounts his over-the-phone wine tasting tradition with his father, which inspired him to recognize a gap in the hospitality industry for wines. Andres shares the journey to becoming a sommelier, the connoisseur of wines, and the challenges he faced launching his business. He walks us through some knowledge of wine regions, sub-regions, and finally shares with us his favorite region. Andres is artful at storytelling which is a talent he leverages for his wine experiences business. We go in-depth on what some of these experiences are like, and the places he gets to travel for his business. If you are on a budget, Andres even shares with us where he finds exceptional wine in California to start learning about wine without breaking the bank. He further guides us on how to approach a glass of wine which I never learned to appreciate

Episode #20: We start the story of Mike Devlin FTMBA 2019 from a humble background with an Indian tiger mom and an American father. Mike initially walks us through his background in investment banking, private equity, and his passion for tackling our health and healthcare using his unique background and set of skills. Then we learn how Mike was forged from a kiln at the peak of Mount Everest… just kidding. I initially heard about Mike running across the country in 90 days from his fellow classmates. I was just as curious as you are to what drives an individual to run across the country for a great cause, such as for ALS, and the kind of physical and, more importantly, mental fortitude required to tackle such an endeavor. Haasies are known to have tackled great feats in one form or another and Mike’s story is one that reminds us that it only takes the ordinary (just a man, a will, a brother, and a van) to achieve the extraordinary. Moreover, the journey of a thousand miles (or almost three thousand) begins wit

Episode #19: Today we’re joined by Jaslyn Law of the EWMBA 2020 program and we start off discussing her undergraduate and Master’s degree at Stanford in Environmental and Earth Sciences. We learn about her work on geographic information systems (GIS) in the Bay Area and then pivoting to data-driven analytical marketing roles. We continue to discuss how far biddable online marketing has come and the traceability of paid marketing results for large corporations versus small players. We then hear about why she is at her current position as Digital Marketing Manager at LinkedIn. We finally get to hear about Jaslyn’s family’s organic mushroom farm in Sonoma County called Gourmet Mushrooms, which just celebrated their 40th year! You can find their brand of organic mushrooms under the brand name Mycopia at stores like Whole Foods, Costco, and Safeway. We discuss her thoughts on her future career either with the family farm or elsewhere. And, lastly, we get more into mushrooms, because who doesn't love mushrooms!

Episode #18: Lou Amayo of the FTMBA 2019 program joins us on this episode to discuss her passion for leveraging Fintech to drive impact into emerging markets and economies. She comes from an industrial engineering background in Peru, where she worked to improve operations for manufacturing processes for a pharmaceutical company. She later joined a Fintech company focused on generating credit scores for people in developing countries without credit history by using alternative data such as psychometrics to better understand and gauge a person’s ability to repay a loan. Her work brought her all over Central and South America, and her internship this summer expands her horizon to multiple countries in Africa. Lou also shares her experiences at Haas thus far and how Haas has helped shape her to become more entrepreneurial-minded and encouraged her to engage with Haas startups.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations