Amy Jin ’18, now attending Harvard, stopped by Harker to talk about her journey and life after high school, as well as answer questions about her path and the project that has brought her several prizes. In 2018, while still a senior, Jin was named one of five students nationwide to receive the Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing. She also was named a 2018 Davidson Fellow Laureate in the technology category for her project, which gives surgeons with a way to assess their technique by analyzing their movements and providing feedback on a variety of criteria, such as economy of motion and bimanual dexterity. Read more here: https://staging.news.harker.org/amy-jin-18-awarded-prestigious-davidson-fellowship-for-project-on-tracking-surgical-tools/
And here are two further articles of interest about Jin:
More than 75 alumni and their guests joined school representatives at the kickoff of this year’s alumni regional tour in New York City. Ethan (Atin) Agarwal ’03, Aaptiv founder and CEO, graciously hosted the event at Aaptiv’s headquarters located on the 49th floor of the magnificent One World Trade Center building. Alumni of the classes of 1979 to 2014 attended. With breathtaking views of the city, great company, music and food, the group had a stellar time. The celebration was one for the books!
The Sterling award is based on overall academic performance and is given to 25 students from the graduating class in the School of Humanities and Sciences. One of the university’s highest academic honors, it has been awarded to two other Harker alumni. In 2016, Anand Natarajan ’09 earned the award, and in 2011, Jocelyn Ko ’07 was an awardee.
One of the features of the award is the in-person recognition of a secondary school teacher who most influenced the recipient in their academic careers. Mani selected math teacher Victor Adler as her most influential teacher. Ko chose to honor Evan Barth and Natarajan chose Eric Nelson.
The Alice T. Schafer prize was established in 1990 by the executive committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). It is named for AWM former president and one of its founding members, Alice T. Schafer, who contributed a great deal to women in mathematics throughout her career.
“I am extremely lucky to have been honored by Stanford and the AWM,” said Mani. “I am incredibly grateful to all of the Harker teachers who inspired me to explore mathematics and research in college, and to an array of amazing Stanford faculty who mentored and encouraged me every step along my undergraduate journey.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2018 issue of Harker Magazine.
Words By Vikki Bowes-Mok
When you think about a stereotypical Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Andy Fang ’10 fits the profile – brilliant, hard-working and willing to take risks. Fang is certainly all that but also so much more. “One of my most cherished times in high school was being part of the school musical,” he remembered with a big smile. “It was something totally outside of my comfort zone – shout out to ‘Music Man’ and ‘Les Misérables’!”
While the school musical was a favorite memory, Fang also excelled in academics and student council, where he served as student body president.
One of his favorite classes was an advanced computer science course in neural networks, before it was a well-known concept, and one that he appreciates being exposed to a few years before it became mainstream.
“Andy was the kind of student that any teacher loves to have. I tended to push Andy to always give me his best efforts, even in the simplest of assignments,” remembered Eric Nelson, upper school computer science department chair, who had Fang three years in a row. “He was bright and applied himself, but still needed a mentor to help him reach his full potential.”
And reach that potential he has. Fang is a co-founder of the ever-popular company DoorDash, which he started with Stanford University classmates Evan Moore, Stanley Tang and Tony Xu. Fang and Tang were named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in the category Consumer Technology in 2016.
The four started the company as Palo Alto Delivery when they were still students at Stanford. After talking to local restaurant owners about their biggest challenges, they realized that delivery was an issue they could help solve. In the early days, the company delivered Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Fang helped deliver the first couple of hundred orders on the platform.
Palo Alto Delivery became DoorDash and the startup was backed by Y Combinator, all before Fang graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2014. Growing up, Fang actually didn’t want to attend Stanford, since it was so close to home, but his passion for computer science and understanding that Silicon Valley was the hub of innovation and entrepreneurship led him to become a Cardinal.
His decision was clearly the right one, since he studied hard, learned well and met his future business partners there. DoorDash has raised $971.8 million in funding, but that’s just the beginning.
“There’s still a lot for us to accomplish at DoorDash. Our vision from day one was always to build a last-mile logistics platform to service any local commerce use case,” said Fang from his San Francisco office. “We’ve primarily been doing that with restaurant food so far, but we’re expanding to other use cases such as grocery, with our recently announced Walmart partnership. I’m excited to see how we’ll continue to grow and mature our logistics network.”
As Fang looks toward a bright future, he remembers his days at Harker with a genuine fondness.
“And the funny thing is, Andy is still deeply involved in The Conservatory as his business has become an integral part of our community – tech week and auditions couldn’t happen without DoorDash!” laughed Laura Lang-Ree, director of K-12 performing arts. “I love to think he’s still a part of the family that way!”
Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.
Prior to the Homecoming game, a few of Harker’s finest athletes, along with their friends and families, gathered for the opening of the Harker Athletic Hall of Fame in the Krishnamurthi Sports Gallery in the recently opened athletic center. When the display was revealed, four names were inscribed on the wall: three Harker athletes and one super fan, Phyllis Carley.
Phyllis Carley
It says a lot about the school that the inaugural group would include someone who was never a student at Harker, and never wore Harker colors on the field, but who represents the school’s spirit. Mrs. Carley started her Harker career in 1952 in Palo Alto as a driver, shuttling local students to school, and became secretary to the head of school; her contribution to campus life went far beyond her desk. She was a staunch supporter of Harker athletics for more than 50 years and, even after retiring, she was one of the program’s biggest fans. She passed away in 2009.
“She gave of her time endlessly to the school. She was first in the door and many times last to leave. She believed in the joy of watching young people develop,” said Mike Bassoni, facilities director, who has been with Harker for more than 30 years.
“She always seemed to be on the lookout for the kid(s) who needed an extra dose of attention that day,” said teacher Pat Walsh, who retired in 2017 and worked with Mrs. Carley for more than 30 years. Mrs. Carley’s love for the school and its athletes earned her this posthumous induction into the new Hall of Fame. Equally, the Harker athletes selected have demonstrated far more than athletic ability, earning academic honors and working hard for success and satisfaction in their professional lives.
Tanya Schmidt ’08
Tanya Schmidt ’08, the most recent graduate, was a four-year starter on Harker’s varsity girls volleyball team. In 2007, she led the team into Harker history with a series of firsts, including being on the first Harker team to compete at the state championships. She was California Division IV State MVP that year. Schmidt went on to a stellar volleyball career at Santa Clara University, then played two years of pro volleyball in Europe.
Beyond athletics, Schmidt was a National Merit finalist and an AP Scholar with Honor, and served as president of a service club while at Harker. At SCU, she was named a regional finalist to interview for a Rhodes scholarship and graduated summa cum laude. Schmidt was awarded the Saint Clare Medal, which recognizes a student who embodies the university’s ideals of “competence, conscience and compassion,” given to the female graduate judged “outstanding in academic performance (and) personal character.”
Having completed her master’s degree, she is now pursuing a doctorate at New York University.
Jason Martin ’07
Jason Martin ’07 was a force on the diamond and gridiron, but had equally strong classroom chops; following college, he played semi-professional baseball, explored entrepreneurship and now works in logistics management. While playing baseball at Harker, Martin was named to the varsity second all-league team during his freshman year and to the first team for the next three years. He played varsity football for three years and in 2006 became the only player in Harker history to run for a touchdown, throw for a touchdown and catch a touchdown in the same game.
His academic successes resonate too: In 2010, Martin was one of two players on the San Jose State University team to land a spot on the College Sports Information Directors of America/ESPN The Magazine Academic All- District VIII Baseball First Team. He was one of only five student athletes in the Western Athletic Conference to be honored for his achievements both in the classroom and on the diamond. Martin finished as the Spartans’ all-time leader in hits (227), runs scored (174), games played (236), at-bat appearances (832) and hit-by-pitches (65).
Along the way he majored in psychology and minored in kinesiology, and graduated as a three time San Jose State scholar-athlete and two time Academic All-Western Athletic Conference athlete, a testament to his efforts in the classroom. Following college and three years of semi-pro ball, Martin took a real-life risk and opened a pizza restaurant, Lefty’s: A Taste of Boston. Lefty’s remains a family business, but Martin wanted a new challenge. He found an avenue for his skills working for Cushman & Wakefield on site at LinkedIn as a logistics coordinator, putting even more of his education to work.
Adam Vucurevich ’02
A member of the upper school’s first class, Adam Vucurevich ’02 played football, baseball and wrestling, making him Harker’s first three-sport athlete. He was team captain for football in his sophomore and junior years, and was MVP and got an honorable mention in the all-CCS team that year. He also captained the baseball and wrestling teams and was Homecoming king his senior year.
On top of all that, his academic work was impressive. Vucurevich noted Harker’s upper school was academically very challenging, but he took up the gauntlet, taking the top math classes offered, including Honors Multivariate Calculus, Differential Equations, AP Statistics and AP Physics C. They were tough, he said, “but I stayed with it and I did not quit.”
Vucurevich went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for a few years in tech, but did not find his place. “It wasn’t me,” he said, “and I wanted to find my purpose.”
To that end, he took a quantum leap. “Harker instilled in me kindness and respect for others and challenged me to do and to be my best, both academically and athletically,” Vucurevich said. “This drive to be my personal best and to do the best for others has led me to my current career of law enforcement. Helping others and dealing with all sorts of people, handling a variety of stressful situations with the right amount of tact, being creative and resourceful, showing good judgment in all types of situations, and having good teamwork skills is essential in my line of work. I have truly found my passion.”
In a Harker alumni chain reaction, following his employment at DoorDash, Barrett Glasauer ’09 has co-founded WanderJaunt, which partners with property owners to maximize value for short-term rentals.
Post-Harker, Glasauer went to the University of California, Berkeley, and picked up an electrical engineering/computer science degree. “While at college, I joined a fraternity, TKE [Tau Kappa Epsilon]” said Glasauer, “and made a bunch of friends who I’m close with to this day – and am lucky enough to have a number of them working with me at WanderJaunt.”
After graduation, Glasauer joined Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company, and led teams of engineers and data scientists helping protect clients from cybersecurity and fraud threats. “After 2.5 years at Palantir, I wanted to get closer to a true startup and reached out to Andy Fang (Harker Class of 2010) about openings at DoorDash,” said Glasauer. “He mentioned that they were starting up a business operations team, which sat at the intersection of data and strategy. It was a great fit for what I was looking for and I had a great time working with a bunch of other Harker alum, notably David Kastelman (Class of 2009), Rohan Chopra (Class of 2010) and Kevin Fu (Class of 2010).
“While at DoorDash, I met my two co-founders for WanderJaunt, Andres Green and Michael Chen. Andres was a general manager for the city of Boston and Michael was building out a bunch of our back-end merchant operations functions. They had a pretty terrible Airbnb experience during a DoorDash East Coast summit, and we got to chatting about how we’d do it better using what we’d learned building an operational tech company. That’s really the genesis of WanderJaunt – the belief that we could take our experience growing a three-sided marketplace at DoorDash with a ton of operational complexity and apply it to the short-term rental space.
“Airbnb, Homeaway, Expedia and all the rest of the online travel agencies (OTAs) had proven that people wanted to stay in homes over hotels when they traveled. The growth proved the fit was there, but the experience from both a host and a guest perspective was littered with inconsistency and operational complexity. It’s that inconsistency that prevented people like my parents from ever trying Airbnb. We believe that we can bring the best of both worlds together to create amazing guest experiences.”
The team finds properties to update and rent out by searching Trulia, Zillow, Craigslist and Redfin for properties available for rent. They also go direct to apartment buildings and lease a number of units at once, using multiple listing services to find properties that are about to go back into the rental market. “We also have acquired a significant chunk of our portfolio through referrals from people we manage properties for. It’s a pretty easy sell for most homeowners – more money, less work,” Glasauer noted.
“To get the properties ready, we have an internal activation team that handles everything from design, painting, furniture install to cleaning and photography,” Glasauer said. “We’ve basically got the process down to a point where we can have a property go from unfurnished to ready for guests within 10 days of us signing the lease. In order to facilitate this speed, we maintain a warehouse in each of our operational markets that stores 15-plus homes worth of furniture at a time to help us combat any lag in furniture delivery. When we first started two years ago, it would take us a full month just to get a single property ready. This November, we’ve managed to activate 20 individual properties.”
The company started out partnering with owners to operate their properties, but is evolving to maximize the use of company resources. “We’ve learned that our business model allows us to create much higher yields on a piece of real estate than owners would get in the traditional long-term market,” said Glasauer. “Looking into the future, we want to capture both the yield upside as well as the appreciation of the real estate asset. To do that, we’ve started raising a private equity real estate fund with the explicit purpose of buying and selling real estate. We expect to buy our first homes by Q2 of 2019.”
Glasauer is clearly a seeker of adventure! When asked what the scariest part of starting a company was, he replied, “Truth be told, I was more scared at the beginning of not taking the chance and I was fearful that if I didn’t take the leap, I would forever kick myself or wonder what could have been. For me, viewing the whole journey as a crazy learning experience that I wouldn’t get in any other company mitigates most of that ‘fear.'”
After all the planning and groundwork, it was exciting to actually open the doors of the first property, he said. “I think getting our very first guest was a huge moment for us,” said Glasauer. “It was the first validation that we could actually put something out there that people were interested in experiencing. I also think it resonated deeply with us that we were building the right thing when we got our first reviews where people said we gave them the best short-term rental experience they ever had or talked about how we helped their family get through things like a funeral or provided a great place to celebrate a birth.”
The journey has been thrilling as Glasauer grows into his management role. “To use a sports analogy,” said Glasauer, “when we first started out, I could be a player 100 percent of the time and it was super clear how outcomes were affected by my inputs. As I’ve played more and more of a team captain or a coach role as the [organization] has grown, the distance between my immediate inputs and the eventual outcomes that we deliver have also grown. It’s been personally challenging to feel like I have less control over the actual output since it requires a larger number of involved players to get to (reach?), but also incredibly rewarding to see super talented people working together to solve problems I never could on my own.”
The company is growing rapidly and WanderJaunt, like so many companies, is seeking good workers. “We would love to talk to software engineers and data scientists located in SF,” said Glasauer, “or folks who’d love to own a P&L [profit and loss concern] and help build the business from the ground floor by running entire markets in Phoenix, Austin and soon Chicago! Further, if anyone owns investment properties in the Phoenix or Austin area, I’d love to chat!”
The three women identified the need for a comprehensive gifting service that lets both consumers and corporations send high-quality, personalized gift boxes for any occasion. The company (shopBOXFOX.com) projects more than $6 million in sales this year. Suri currently serves as BOXFOX’s chief strategy officer.
She met co-founder and CEO Chelsea Moore at her first job in advertising, who then introduced her to Jenni Olivero, her other co-founder and COO. Together, they bring experience from the worlds of advertising, PR, sports and e-commerce, and contribute to BOXFOX in distinct ways that cater to their strengths.
“I oversee long-term growth and business objectives for the company,” said Suri. “I’m always thinking a year, two, even five years ahead, ensuring that we stay relevant and competitive. On a day-to-day level, I oversee our corporate sales division (BOXFOX Concierge), broader partnerships, web initiatives, trendspotting and more.”
As a unique operation, there were challenges. “The hardest part of starting BOXFOX was doing so without any kind of rulebook,” said Suri. “We’ve bootstrapped since day one, so there were a lot of decisions that we just made from our gut (and usually a lot of Google searching), from picking the right box manufacturers to pricing our product to choosing the best shipping carrier.
Suri built a resume that gave her the chops to build a brand. She was a USC Global Fellow and earned a three-month summer fellowship in Hong Kong with Burberry, according to her bio. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in public relations. Suri held down a number of positions as BOXFOX got off the ground, including managing the corporate concierge program, driving B2B business development, and working closely with developers on site enhancements and solutions to constantly improve offerings.
With the company up and running, she has settled in to her current role a bit. “Today, the challenges look a little different. We’re fortunate to have an incredible network of fellow entrepreneurs and experts of all kinds we can call upon. As founders, we now spend a large portion of our time thinking about both managing and scaling our team while maintaining our company culture and values. Scaling can be as scary as it is exciting, but we hire hardworking, kind people who believe in our mission and entrust them to shape our ever-evolving culture.
The payoff? “The most rewarding part of our company is witnessing the impact we have on people’s relationships,” noted Suri “We started BOXFOX after a personal experience left us without a solution to being there for a friend in the hospital. We wanted to send a meaningful, tangible gift with items that would actually help her heal.
“In the four years since, it’s been deeply gratifying to see that same spirit behind the gifts our customers give every single day, from the products they choose to the messages they type. We’re making it easy and accessible for people to be there for the people in their lives, even when they can’t be there physically.”
Becoming an entrepreneur means pulling together disparate skills. Suri’s advice to help with that challenge: “Put simply: take advantage,” she said. “Harker is such a special place and was absolutely instrumental in getting me to where I am today. There are so many resources, between the courses, the faculty and the extracurricular options. Harker gives you the potential to explore anything you are passionate about; if that’s entrepreneurship, you can get a head start.
“More importantly, the people you meet at Harker will be in your network forever. They will be your co-founders, your bosses, future hires, neighbors and best friends. So make the most of the time with them both in and out of the classroom.”
Karlene McCallaCreary ’09 was a Raiderette of the week in early October! A graduate of Harker’s Conservatory dance program and former member of Harker’s varsity dance team, she is in her first season with the Raiderettes.
McCallaCreary began dancing at a young age and jazz/hip-hop quickly became her favorite styles. After Harker, she studied accounting at Santa Clara University where she graduated with honors. She danced while at SCU: one year in the theater and two years on the dance team.
“My dance experience at Harker and Santa Clara gave me the foundation and encouragement to audition for a professional team. I have been loving my first season on the Raiderettes,” McCallaCreary said, “and I am really thankful to have this opportunity to continue dancing for an incredible organization among a talented group of women.”
Tiffany Zhu ’17, now at Stanford, had her Mitra Family Endowment for the Humanities paper, written while at Harker, published in the spring 2018 issue of the Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal. The paper is titled “Putting the Realism in Socialist Realism: Gorky’s Mother as a Bridge between Soviet and Chernyshevskian Literary Aesthetics.”
Zhu has continued to pursue her interest in Russia and took a three-week seminar in St. Petersburg. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see much about (Maxim) Gorky (he was mostly based in Moscow, it turns out),” Zhu said, “but we did get to look at Soviet architecture, which we learned had as complicated a relationship with the state as Soviet literature.
“Right now, I’m taking an upper-division colloquium on Russian revolutionaries from the 18th century to the present day, and one of our readings talked about Chernyshevsky’s ‘What is to be Done?’ I feel that my Mitra research prepared me to understand Chernyshevsky and his context when the time came.”
She added a note to her Mitra mentors. “Thank you, so much, once again, for all of your encouragement and support from the very beginning. You all have inspired me to dive deeper into my passions, and I really don’t think I could be the scholar (and Russia enthusiast) I am today without the Mitra program.” Check out her paper – it’s the first one in the magazine.
Millie Lin ’18, former Cantilena member, has joined Stanford Chamber Chorale! Lin noted she enjoyed Cantilena so much, she thought she’d give the audition a whirl. “It reminds me of the Cantilena experience, and I actually got in!” she said. The group “sings classical music like Cantilena and is a small SATB [soprano, alto, tenor, bass] group, and I’m really looking forward to bonding with the fellow singers, who include even grad students! Everyone sounds incredible and is so musical.”
Lin sent special thanks to Susan Nace, vocal teacher at Harker. “I couldn’t have gotten in without you, as my enthusiasm for last year’s amazing conducting experience and the past three years’ singing had prompted me to converse with Chamber Chorale members (and the director).”
“This is marvelous news!” said Nace. “The chamber chorale in most universities is one usually reserved for graduate students and upperclassmen. What an accomplishment to be admitted as a froshie!”