I am honored to have received the Graziadio Alumni Network “Star” award from the Graziadio school of business at Pepperdine University, where I earned my MBA.
A lot of hard work has been put in over the past 2 years so it is nice to be recognized, although I humbly served from the heart to benefit students and alumni.
My passion was setting up the Waves Ignite program, which helps entrepreneurs by providing them an entrepreneurial community with a myriad of business resources and contacts. Need an accountant? We got 15 vetted alumni CPA’s. Need a lawyer? We got 15 vetted Pepperdine attorneys. Need access to venture capitalists? The list goes on towards what we are creating.
When I started with GAN-LA, I initially had dinner with the council near Christmas in 2015. During that dinner, I met Dr. Michael Williams who was overseeing the alumni staff. I reached out to him at a later time and we met up at Pepperdine West LA campus over coffee to learn more about how I could teach at Pepperdine. He then introduced me to Dr. Kyle Murphy, and I was able to be a guest speaker at one of his entrepreneurship classes in Encino, as well as help review the final presentations of another class in Malibu. I later then met Dean David Smith, who just so happened to be a MSU alumni like myself; go Spartans. He introduced me to others within Pepperdine to see about teaching. While creating the first night of the Waves Ignite event, I reached out to another alumni and professor Shawn Herrera to speak at the event. I recently invited Shawn to come speak at my business management class I’m teaching at another university’s MBA program. Another time I met President Andrew K. Benton. Recently I met our new Dean – Dr. Deryck van J. Rensburg. This doesn’t even include all the amazing students and alumni! The point is… relationships are important and I likely wouldn’t have gotten chances like this to meet such wonderful successful people unless I graciously donated my time to Pepperdine. So what are you waiting for?
