Short answer:
Provide and foster opportunity.
Long answer:
I’ve always had a love affair with the Internet. It started when I was 8 and figured out how to log-in to my father’s Prodigy account for the first time. When I graduated from my undergraduate degree from University of California, Irvine in Computer Engineering, I knew I wanted to help keep the internet going and thought l2/l3 was the place to be. So, after interviewing at various companies, it was a pretty easy decision (i.e. organizational culture, the team, job opportunities, etc.) to join Nortel as a 22 year old. After about half a year though, I realized that my abilities, as they were then, just weren’t going to cut it. A graduate degree was going to be a necessity in order to do anything there as pretty much everyone in the field had, at least, a MS in Network Engineering.
Yet, that path didn’t feel right. Mostly for the following reasons:
- I had learnt or was already learning everything at work that I would learn in a Masters program.
- I knew I didn’t have enough technical wizardry in me to do anything exceptional as an Engineer.
- I knew I couldn’t see myself as an Engineer my entire life.
- I knew I always had a good intuition for saving money, juggling costs and benefits (I’m a bit of a miser), figuring out the most practical use of technology in my life as well as being way too passionate, vocally, to be stuck in a cubicle all day.
So, I took the advice of a lot of folks and embarked on a MBA.
Then, a bunch of things happened very quickly that change my life forever. After almost 2 years at Nortel, I realized that the real innovation on the Internet wasn’t the L2/L3 side anymore. The industry was a hollow shell. It didn’t hold the Internet in the same point of view as I did. What’s a guy supposed to do at this point? Pretty much reboot.
So, I got back into volunteering trying to figure it all out again; first over at a Homeless Shelter in San Jose doing a bit of teaching and mentoring and at Mozilla (on a recommendation from a good college friend) to try out another part of the web. Both experiences re-taught me why I cared about the Internet in the first place. Each provided people with an opportunity to better their lives no matter what, where or who they were. Case in point, the kids at the homeless shelter didn’t have the same opportunities due to piss poor luck of being born into those situations. There were smart kids that, if put in a nurturing situation that allowed them to express themselves in constructive ways, could have really had better lives. It reminded me of a lot of things: what my parents forced themselves to go through for a better life for our family, the lack of proper help for friends and family that couldn’t afford living in better areas, the socio-economic disparities in Irvine and it’s surrounding cities and many other thoughts in the same line. It was painfully obvious that I had to do something about this.
So, I helped out in the Mozilla community trying to build my resume to hopefully get a position on the L5-L7 side. Though with some luck, Mozilla had an open position available and wanted me to take it; I grabbed it and haven’t looked back since then. Sure, I was starting a new career in a semi-new industry, while also starting a graduate program that was unrelated to my new job. I continued on anyways and, in the process, learned a whole lot. The past couple of years have really helped provide focus on what I want to do with my MBA. I’ve realized the purpose of an MBA is not to make gobs of money, it’s help to build a toolkit (i.e. nomenclature, learning to be a better enabler, business contacts, etc.) for the future to help create opportunities for myself and others.
My post-MBA goal now is pretty simple. It’s to make the world an easier place to create and foster opportunities on the Internet for those who want to better theirs or others’ lives.
