Non-profits:

The Entrepreneurial Society:

The ES is a professional student organization that promotes and fosters entrepreneurial activities at San Jose State.   I joined in the spring semester of 2004 as the Vice President and was quickly awarded the title of President by the end of the semester. 

As the General Manager of the club, it was my responsibility to oversee the operations of the club.  When I first took over, the membership was approximately 8 students; this was an extremely low number at a university with over 30,000 students.  So, my first task was to re-design the infrastructure and increase membership.   Within one semester, we raised the membership number to over 50, an increase of 525%.  This was a very vital and a very mission critical accomplishment. 

The next mission critical task was to generate revenue.  We first established in membership fee to join the club.  Then, we created sponsor packages that could raise funds from local businesses.  The most successful sponsorship acquisition was with Honda of Stevens Creek and the fantastic press coverage we received as a result.  Finally, we developed revenue generating programs such as our Coupon/Restaurant Program in which the ES distributed coupons for local restaurants and for each coupon used, the ES received a percentage of sales; this was a very successful program.  All in all, we generated an average of $4K per year in revenue.     

Next, we needed to increase our event attendance numbers; this was very important because we hosted these events in partnership with the Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship which was a faculty lead center and it gave us major visibility on campus.  The ES officers conceived and implemented marketing strategies that increased event attendance an average of 43%.  I was very pleased with this and with my team and awarded them properly.     

I served as President until fall of 2005 and I must say that the leadership and public servant role I played was probably the most enjoyable position I have held to date.  Running the team, serving the members and ensuring that everyone received an equal share of the benefits provided by the ES was so exciting and pleasurable that if a permanent position existed, I just might have applied for it.

The Silicon Valley Connections program:

This program was started as a trial or Beta test to Global Educational Program, LLC.  I got the idea my senior year in college after returning from the Global Technology Initiative in which a group of grant-sponsored SJSU students flew to Taiwan and China to visit large corporations within the region; I was fortunate enough to be one of those students.  I realized that the -headquarters of many of the companies we visited where located right in our own backyard –Silicon Valley. 

After receiving funding from the College of Business Dean’s office, we launched the program in the fall semester of 2005.  My team and I ran the program for free – as we were seeking to gain experience in the Professional Study Tour industry.  The program was wildly popular and was based on first- come first- serve.  We would open the online registration at 8am and by 9am all 25 open seats would be filled.  We visited such companies as HP, Applied Materials, Hyperion, Sun Microsystems, NASA and National Semiconductor.  At least one student received an internship at Applied Materials as a result of these trips.