This past year has flown by, and it’s hard to believe we’re already almost halfway through our final semester at Stern, and graduation is only a few short months away. The January West Coast Tech Immersion was a great way to kick it off too.
Over winter break, we spent two weeks in Seattle and San Francisco exploring the tech space there, visiting all kinds of companies. It was a wonderful opportunity to get a better understanding of each company’s role in the tech ecosystem, and how they were leveraging it to drive innovation within their organization. It was also great to connect with Stern alumni at each of these companies and learning about their experiences in their roles and living in each of these cities.
We kicked the trip off in Seattle with a visit to Amazon, where we toured their campus and learned about their most innovative projects. It was interesting to learn about these initiatives, and to connect with Stern alums currently working there, and hear about the different projects they were working on, and how much they enjoyed living in Seattle.
Another highlight of the Seattle portion of the trip was visiting Microsoft’s campus in Redmond. Like Amazon, we spent the day touring the campus and later talking to Microsoft senior management about their latest projects. We also had the opportunity to meet Jeff Teper in person, Corporate VP at Microsoft, NYU Stern alum, and member of the Tech MBA Advisory Board.
The rest of the week was definitely packed with more visits and meetings with Boeing’s Horizon X division, the Create 33 entrepreneurship center, networking event with Stern alums, and catching up and reconnecting with classmates about their winter breaks and all the places they traveled before arriving in Seattle.
After an action-packed week in Seattle, we all flew to San Francisco, where another busy week awaited us. We started off with a corporate visit to Salesforce downtown and met with representatives who shared what services the company provided, and success stories of some of their clients. The next day, we visited Oracle and PayPal, explored their offices, and learned about how they help their clients, and what new projects they’ve been working on. Given my specific interest in fintech, I was particularly excited about visiting PayPal and learned so much about the company during the visit.
Our last day in San Francisco couldn’t have been better. We first met with David Ko, President and COO of Rally Health and also a member of the Tech MBA Advisory Board, and learned about his experience as a startup founder and his career trajectory. His story was truly inspiring and we all thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to meet him and connect with him. We then visited Google’s offices, another company visit many of us were very much looking forward to. There, we met with Google employees from many different divisions, from AdWords to Waymo, and learned firsthand about their different projects and how they fit within the larger organization.
Overall, the Tech Immersion Trek was a great trip and provided an incredible opportunity to explore these cities, learn more about the different companies we visited, and reconnect with fellow classmates. It is definitely one of the highlights of the program for me so far, and I loved every minute of it!