Career Panels Provide Students with Insight from Professionals in the Field
Choosing the right career path is often foremost on the minds of students in the upper grades of high school. With college just around the corner, older students begin to think more seriously about what they want to do in college … and beyond.
In an effort to help provide information about future college majors and career options, The Harker School Mentoring Program brings upper school students together with adult mentors. One highly successful and important feature of the mentoring program is its career panel luncheons.
Held throughout the school year, the panels offer guest mentors an opportunity to speak about their chosen professions to interested students. Mentors come from diverse professional backgrounds, yet they share strong connections with the school community, usually as parents or alumni. It is this shared dedication to education at Harker that provides a common ground for discourse.
The panels are organized by Jennifer Hargreaves, director of middle and upper school volunteer programs. “We are very grateful to all the parents and friends of Harker for their participation on a career panel,” said Hargreaves.
Below is a list of those who have generously dedicated their time to the project:
Doctors:
- Dr. Stacey Law – orthodontist in private practice and adjunct clinical faculty with the Craniofacial Anomolies Clinic at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
- Dr. Surendra Gudapati – interventional cardiologist in private practice, El Camino Hospital
- Dr. John Siegel – general and trauma surgeon at Valley Medical Center, a level one trauma center
Engineers:
- Gautham Nadathur – architect, embedded platforms, Apple
- Maria Gong – lead recruiter software engineer, Google
- Rajiv Batra – founder and SVP of engineering, Palo Alto Networks
Business and Entrepreneurs:
- Jack Jia, founder (Trusper, Interwoven, Baynote, V-max), CEO, angel investor
- Joe Schneider, CEO of Lacrosse Footwear
Biotech:
- Dr. Yalia Jayalakshmi, co-founder & VP, Product Dev, StemPar Sciences (past: Johnson & Johnson, Alza, Genentech, Cygnus)
- Dr. Olga Issakova, executive vice president, Nanosyn, Inc.
Non-Traditional Careers:
- Jane Coyne, humanitarian, Doctors Without Borders
- Brad Hargreaves, drummer, Third Eye Blind