Stanford hosts SigEp alumni career panel

Now is the best time to look for summer internships or full-time recruitment. Our chapter wanted to give our junior and senior brothers the upper-hand, and arrange an intimate networking and informational session. We brought together a panel of alumni brothers to speak about their experiences and share their success stories.

The panel consisted of Peter Berg, Stanford ’01, strategy and innovation at Visa; Ryan Elliott, California-San Diego ’99, patent attorney at Blakely Skoloff Taylor & Zaffman; Patrick Fleisch, Stanford ’02, senior manager at Accenture; Kalen Gallagher, California-Davis ’05, founder of ClassDojo; and Bryan Kaminski, Johns Hopkins ’06, university recruiting at Google.

The undergraduates were able to gain insight into the professional world from the panel. How do we embrace change, as we shift careers, or are unfortunately faced with unemployment?

Kalen Gallagher shared his experiences in the education industry, and how he followed his passion for improving education to start his company, ClassDojo. His story taught us to invoke our passions while searching for a career path.

Engineer Peter Berg, revealed his passion for building products, and the organizations that develop around products. He talked about his career progression from engineer, to consultant, to a strategic manager. Patrick Fleisch, a career consultant, provided perspective on what it means to climb up the corporate ladder.

Bryan Kaminski, who works with college students, was a great resource for brothers wanting to know more about the recruiting process at a high tech firm. Ryan Elliott, on the other hand, spoke about what it means to work with high tech firms as a patent attorney.

Aside from the career advice, we learned that when we become alumni, there’s more ways to give back than just in donations. Just taking an evening to speak with undergraduates goes a long way. Our chapter hopes this event will lead to others that will establish mentor relationships between current brothers and alumni.

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