Voices of Santa Clara Podcast

Thane Kreiner is one of my heroes. As executive director of Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Dr. Kreiner sets the vision and trajectory for programs that empower students and entrepreneurs to impact hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Prior to diving into leading the center, Dr. Kreiner was an entrepreneur himself, starting four biotech companies in the span of just three ye...

Eva Blanco Masias is the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Santa Clara, leading all recruitment and admission efforts for the university. Although her parents didn’t graduate elementary school, Eva attended Yale and worked in Latin American and Hispanic media before pivoting to the admissions department at Santa Clara. Eva spends her free time with her young daughter, DJ’ing and doing yoga. In t...

Dr. Michelle Stecker works for Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara, and teaches classes on innovation, design thinking, and social entrepreneurship. Dr. Stecker has worked in a wide range of fields and has an impressive list of educational accomplishments, a Bachelors in History from George Fox, a Master’s in Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary, a JD law degree from Univ...

Santa Clara prides itself on helping students transition into the workforce, while prioritizing ethics and social justice over simply making a lot of money. And one of the key resources for students is the career center. In this episode, I spoke to four of Santa Clara’s career counselors to get answers to some of the most common questions that students have. Where should I find internships? Should...

Carl Maggio is a recent 2018 graduate, and worked extensively with the Virtual Reality Lab at Santa Clara, combining his engineering background with his artistic side to create virtual reality simulations. Specifically, he has worked with the philosophy department to simulate a famous philosophical experiment called the trolley problem which he will explain more in the interview. We also cover Car...

In this special edition the show, I'm going to tell you a story about how I almost didn't make it to Europe to study abroad. One crucial step in the process is obtaining a student visa, which for me required a trip to the Italian consulate in San Francisco. This is the tale of my journey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If I were to be a professor, I would want Bill Sundstrom’s job. Dr. Sundstrom researches the economics of income inequality, poverty, the environment, and labor market discrimination based on race, gender and ethnicity. In his spare time, Dr. Sundstrom enjoys hiking, gardening and listening to jazz. In this conversation, we cover Dr. Sundstrom’s passion for gardening with native plants, his career...

Rachel Robles graduated in June 2018 in business and communications. During her senior year, she held leadership organizations in two of the biggest organizations on campus: APB (Activities Programming Board) and Student Ambassadors. Rachel is passionate about event planning and shared some of her favorite stories, leadership lessons and memorable experiences from the past four years.  Hosted...

Ed Maurer is a professor in the civil engineering department at Santa Clara. He specializes in modeling water resources and systems to predict future climate change. We discuss how Dr. Maurer’s childhood love of bicycles lives on to this day, his career path, how to think about climate change, the California drought, and his research projects. My biggest takeaway from this interview was on the imp...

Marisa Rudolph’s grandparents are farmers in North and South Dakota, and she never imagined that one day she too would come to embrace the impact that farming can have on communities. Marisa graduated in June 2018 majoring in environmental science and political science. She was one of eight winners of the Fulbright Scholarship, and she will be continuing her research in Ghana in September 2018. Wh...

Jimmy Flynn is a natural on the radio. Before his recent graduation, Jimmy was the editor-in-chief of The Santa Clara student newspaper, and he produced his own radio segment on KSCU, the Santa Clara student radio station. This past year, Jimmy and his friend Riley McShane created a movie titled “Ego Death: A Mockumentary Inside a Mockumentary,” which is a comedic take on their experiences running...

Thirty episodes in, we're going to take a pause for me to reflect on some of the questions I often get, some of my personal takeaways and patterns I've noticed. In this episode, I'll cover why I started the podcast, my favorite episode, common patterns among guests, how I research guests and come up with questions, some brief notes on a book about where good ideas come from, and the roadmap f...

Brian Green is the Director of Technology Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara. Dr. Green represents the Center in the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, oversees the Markkula Center Environmental Ethics and Hackworth Fellows, works with the university’s ethics bowl team, and teaches engineering ethics in the Graduate School of Engineering. In this very wide-ranging...

Jack Herstam served as the student body president during the 2017-2018 school year. Jack majored in political science and ethnic studies and previously led the orientation program. After graduating, he plans to take a gap year while serving in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps at his High School in Arizona, then enter law school to become a prosecutor or district attorney.  https://www.voicesofsanta...

Taylor Berry is a graduating senior political science major and women’s basketball player at Santa Clara. This past year, she gave a TEDx Talk titled “Fostering Genuine Conservations to Reveal Our Similarities.” Taylor was also a Hackworth Fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics researching free speech and civil discourse. Taylor plans to take a year off before starting law school on her...

Sanjiv Das is Professor of Finance and Data Science at Santa Clara. After a childhood in Bombay, India, then moved to New York to get a Ph. D. from NYU. Dr. Das has worked in banking, and served as a professor at Harvard Business School and UC Berkeley. When he’s not researching machine learning, derivatives pricing models or portfolio theory, you might find him riding his racing motorcycle along...

Ciaran Freeman is a senior majoring in studio art and art history. His lengthy resume includes being a student fellow at Recology in San Francisco, a Jean Donovan Fellow working at the Commonweal Magazine, an immersion trip coordinator, the founder of the Santa Clara Student Art League and the Assistant Residence Director in the Casa Italiana residence hall. Ciaran’s art explores social justice is...

Zerreen Kazi is a Spanish major and Computer Science minor, and serves as the Director of the Multicultural Center (MCC) at Santa Clara. In this conversation, we talk about her experience growing up in a Muslim family in the Bay Area and how she ended up at Santa Clara. We discuss finding how she first found a community, then helped build communities as a CF and through leadership in the MCC.&nbsp...

Many students first saw Tony Cortese sitting in Benson behind a sign that said, “Hi, I’m Tony, a Jesuit Novice. I’m available to chat. Disclaimer: I’m not here to preach, to judge or to be obnoxiously religious.” Tony is a Jesuit novice at Santa Clara, meaning he is in the second year of a 10-year process of becoming a Jesuit priest. He will take the three Jesuit vows of poverty, chastity and obed...

Harshi Mogallapalli (say Hershey like the chocolate) is the Director of SCCAP (Santa Clara Community Action Program), Santa Clara’s volunteering and community service student organization. Her passion for community service started young, and she founded a non-profit in high school to bring music into an afterschool program in urban Milwaukee. While in college, she has taken advantage of several of...

Renee Baumgartner has served as the Athletic Director at Santa Clara since 2015. Baumgartner captained the USC women’s golf team when she was in college, and played an integral role in starting the Oregon women’s golf team. She worked in administrative roles at Oregon and Syracuse before joining Santa Clara with a mission to revitalize the sports program. In this episode, we get into some of my bi...

Jeanne Rosenberger is the Vice Provost for Student Life at Santa Clara. She oversees a large staff that touches many aspects of the student experience including Cowell Health, Career Center, Residence Life, Student Involvement and Campus Recreation Office for Multicultural, Learning, Office of Disabilities Resources and Benson Memorial Center. Rosenberger has been at Santa Clara since 1991, and we...

Bob Owen is the tech guy. As Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost, Owen oversees all forms of technology at the university, from the internet to phones to special research equipment. Around campus, Owen is known for his creative and witty emails. In this interview, we cover how Owen found a career path combining his passions for technology and people, the secret behind his “perfect” disserta...

Lulu Santana is the Director of Campus Ministry. She started as a graduate program Resident Minister living on the seventh floor of Swig Residence Hall in 1996 and has primarily worked in Campus Ministry ever since. She is transitioning out of the role at the end of the year, so make sure to stop by Campus Ministry and thank her for her many years of service! In this episode, we talk about what sh...

Dr. Brett Solomon is a Child Studies professor and Director of SCU’s Future Teachers Project. Dr. Solomon’s mission to, “educate, guide, mentor and support the next generation of ‘fire starters.’” She writes about the “pre-school to prison pipeline,” as well as social justice and cultural competence. In this episode, we cover the topic of her new blog , how to make a difference in systemic issues...