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2016 Alumni Notes Graduation Years 2005-08

2008

Jenna Berke (Maskell)

Since graduating, I had been working at Yahoo until this year when I took a new opportunity with Kaiser Permanente. I'm a national products operation manager, focused on process improvement (using my Six Sigma Black Belt certification). I am also currently studying for the PMP. I still live in Burbank with my wonderful husband, Mike. We enjoy traveling (went to Costa Rica this year) and staying active.

Wade Herndon

I finished teaching at UCSB in June and have been traveling and playing music ever since then. And for your enjoyment, here's a Steve Martin quote on ending a sentence with a preposition: that is a rule up with which it is hard to put.

Katherine Rizos (Riester)

I have been with Amgen since graduating in 2008, and I am currently working on the reporting and analytics needs of our clinical operations group. I love going to the gym and traveling. I have visited nine countries in the last three years.

Sean Silva

Sean Silva with his wife and two kidsProfessional:
Two weeks after graduating, I started my first job as a risk analyst for the disease management and wellness company, SHPS, in Walnut Creek, Calif. After working there for two years and passing two actuarial exams, I contacted the actuarial recruiting company DW Simpson and subsequently was offered a position as an actuarial analyst at Milliman in San Francisco in its health and welfare practice. I started in the spring of 2010 and have been there ever since, although I now work out of the Walnut Creek office location. Fast forward to today. By the time this is published, I will have sat for my very last actuarial exam (assuming I pass) to earn my FSA under the Society of Actuaries. I am also a member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA) and have a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) credential. I have transitioned from an actuarial analyst into a lead consulting role for several of our health and welfare and pension clients and manage our staff of analysts. Being a lead consultant requires quite a bit of travel, but luckily it is mostly restricted to the West Coast.

Personal:
I have lived in the east Bay Area ever since graduation and absolutely love it. I married my long-term girlfriend in the summer of 2012, and we are now the proud parents of two awesome boys, Nolan (two years old) and Maverick (four months old). We love spending time with them and watching them grow.

Casey Word

Professionally, I’m in my fourth year working as an actuary at Milliman. I received a promotion of sorts which increases my authority and flexibility in communicating with clients. I’m pretty excited about that. My summer was rather eventful. I bought a home in Walnut Creek, and my boyfriend who I have been dating long distance moved from Milwaukee to live with me. We had a fun road trip carting his belongings across the country. Recently, we’ve been spending a lot of our free time purchasing furniture and making updates to our home.

2007

Richele Benevent

Richele Benevent and her familyAfter graduating from Cal Poly in 2007, I took a year off school and starting working at Thomson Reuters as an SAS programmer/analyst. A year later I switched to part-time and was allowed to work from home so that I could return to school at Oregon State University to get my doctorate. After having two kids (the first of which attempted to come at school — my water broke while waiting for a professor’s office hour), I decided a master’s would be sufficient. Though both the company and my title have changed names multiple times, I have been working with the same company since I left Cal Poly nearly 10 years ago. In addition to this job, I have fallen in love with teaching and have had the opportunity to teach math and statistics classes at Linn-Benton Community College, Oregon State University and most recently the Los Rios Community College District. I have three kids — Lily, Daisy and Charlie — who keep their daddy and me on our toes at all times. 

Kendall Roberg

I recently finished a documentary about a frog I am passionate about (Youtube: "Red Frog Story"). I now have two kids and love demonstrating statistical concepts with them (Youtube: "Determining a Baby's Favorite Color").

2006

Kristin Esquivias (Sharp)

I am still working at Sephora corporate offices in San Francisco, leading the Business Analytics team. We are responsible for infusing the client data into how the organization evaluates our business and leveraging these insights to drive and fine tune future strategy. It's exciting to be a part of an organization that is driving a great amount of innovation in the retail space and that analytics plays an important role in that growth. The analytics team is growing at a fast rate as the demand for more rich analysis becomes more and more important.

On a personal note, my extended family has expanded greatly in the last year, adding four nieces and nephews for a total of 11 kids across both sides of the family. Our family get togethers are crazy and rambunctious, but there is no better sound than kids running, giggling and playing together. 

Christian Milbank

I still work for Dignity Health in San Francisco and have transferred from my position in the Retirement Benefits Department to a role with the Workforce Intelligence team. My wife, Sonia, and I got married this January in San Francisco, and I like to think it was such a success due to my planning spreadsheet that would make any statistics professor proud (complete with stochastic projections and confidence intervals).

Rebeca Sermer

For the past four and a half years I have been enabling sales and directing product with the power of data and analytics at Linkedin. Thank God Cal Poly’s statistics program set me up for success in the tech world, and I am grateful for the jump start to my career. Outside of work my husband, Peter, and I enjoy spending time with our two little girls, Skyla (three and a half) and Rylin (one). My advice for current students would be to learn all that you can in your studies utilizing the amazing resource you have in your professors. Also, make sure to have programming be a part of your curriculum either for college credits or with online courses, as a hiring manager I value applicants showing initiative and curiosity to broaden their skill set (think Python, R, SQL, Pig, D3, etc.).

2005

Jacqueline Conway

I am currently on maternity leave from Gap Inc. where I'm the director of customer data science. I'm living in Orinda with my husband (a Cal Poly biz school alum) and our two daughters: Anna (three years) and Brooke (four months).

Alicia Davis (Fry)

While working in analytics, I married and had kids. We moved to Sacramento, and I decided to be a stay-at-home mom. After reading Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother, I became really motivated to work as an instructor at a community college. After receiving my last rejection letter, I called my husband insisting we move to Philadelphia so I could live by my sister. Strangely enough, the dean of the Math Department at American River College called me the next day for an interview, and I’m happy to say we didn’t move to Philly because I got the job. I started by teaching statistics courses, and this term I’m teaching a beginning algebra class as well. Even though the material is much less complicated, this class brings on a new set of challenges, mostly regarding motivation.

I’m happy to dedicate more time to writing. I maintain my blog www.beeplease.blogspot.com where I talk about my kids, feminism, media, philosophy and plenty of other stuff. It’s very fun and lets me have a voice in a somewhat isolated adult life. I’m most proud of completing my first screenplay this year, a comedy-drama (not to be confused with drama-comedy). I hope in my next alumni update I’ll express excitement over seeing it made into a movie.

Other than my professional goals, my kids are happy and healthy. My daughter started elementary school, and my son preschool. I’ve heard her described as an “indigo child” because she seems to be in a different world sometimes. Her demeanor causes more confusion for teachers than my three-year-old son, who gets in trouble every other day for not listening to his teachers. To think of her as being misunderstood bothers me, but the same thing happened to me in first grade, when I was observed because I wouldn’t talk to anyone. So I keep this in mind, I didn’t fit the mold of a normal five-year-old, and look at me now, perfectly average. All kidding aside, parenting is complicated, but so very rewarding.

I feel happy and productive and enjoy my life. Well, maybe I don’t like grading exams that much, but everything else is really awesome!

Hank Elgin

After graduating from Cal Poly in 2005 I was happy to be able to live in San Luis Obispo and work at Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes for three years doing statistical analysis and reporting on their cognitive reading programs. I found I was interested in pursuing graduate-level studies in statistics and eventually ended up at the University of Essex in the U.K. where I obtained a master’s in statistics and econometrics. After graduating I moved back to the wild west of California where I took a position at the electric utility Southern California Edison in Los Angeles as a load research analyst, and yes, I apply the full breadth of skills acquired from Cal Poly's statistics program on a daily basis. We heavily leverage SAS to access very large databases of customer billing and energy use to provide analysis in support of testimony before the state regulators. 

Anne Humphrey

Anne Humphrey on Mt. WhitneyI was promoted at Paychex to implementation specialist where I set up payroll accounts for large clients who use our suite of payroll and human resources products. I summited Mt. Whitney again in September. It was a very long 22 miles in one day! Shortly after that I went to Rochester, N.Y., for implementation training and took a detour to Niagara Falls.

 

Amanda Koper (King)

For the past eight years I have been working at the outdoor apparel company Patagonia and living in Santa Barbara. I am currently the senior director of global planning and merchandising. I am responsible for all of the inventory we purchase globally, from how much, to where it is shipped and how it is displayed online and in stores. My job requires me to travel around the world to work with my global team, and I have been fortunate enough to have my husband join me on some of these regular adventures to Japan, France and Australia. We have a three-year-old son named Alex and a baby girl due in the next couple months. Both of them will join me at our offices where we have on-site childcare, so I truly get to balance being a mom and having a career.

 

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