Sanjana Gupta: Where Systems Meet People: Pop-Up Permits
Working with the City of San José’s Planning, Building, and Code Enforcement Department has reshaped how I think about the role of business education in government and community work. Before this fellowship, I associated business skills primarily with private-sector outcomes achieved by efficiency that focused on profitability. Being inside a city department has shown me that those same skills are just as essential in public service, just applied toward different goals. Instead of maximizing profit, the objective centers on improving access serving residents more effectively.
One experience that made this especially tangible was working a pop-up permit stand at a local library. We spent an afternoon sitting with citizens working on building projects, from renovating their homes to setting up an ADU (accessory dwelling unit). It was a small setup, but it represented something much larger; meeting people where they are and helping them navigate processes that can feel overwhelming. In that setting, the work wasn’t about dashboards or data pipelines, it was about explaining requirements clearly to those with questions ensuring they left with more clarity than confusion. That day reinforced for me that systems only work if people understand them.
My business education has given me hard skills that are incredibly valuable in this environment. But what has surprised me is how much the soft skills matter. Technical skills are teachable; they improve with internships through exposure. Soft skills, however, require a deeper foundation and are often what make the technical work impactful. In my organization, the most valuable contributions come not just from building better systems, but from ensuring those systems serve people well. That balance is what I’m continuing to learn how to navigate.