Community Fellows Blog Posts

My fellowship at the Diocese of San Jose has revealed a surprising parallel between my business education and this spiritual community: a shared focus on being goal-oriented. While the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University teaches us to drive toward measurable outcomes, I’ve found that this mindset is equally central to mission-driven work. Whether I am managing data or coordinating outreach, the professional rigor I am developing at school mirrors the dedication required to move a large, faith-based organization toward its common values. I’ve realized that the Diocese operates with the complexity of a large corporation, requiring different departments to collaborate on high-stakes projects to serve the community. In this environment, the most valuable skill is the ability to align technical business objectives with human-centric goals. My training in strategic planning and organizational behavior has been essential in navigating this balance, proving that business rigor is a vital support for, not a distraction from, non-profit work. 

Passing by our Mission is an ordinary experience for a student like me; walking to and from class, to grab a bite, or to just see our lovely buildings, the Mission always tends to find the spotlight. As someone who is not Catholic, it was previously a landmark, or hallmark sight passing, but in times of despair or sheer curiosity, I’ve been known to walk inside. I was fortunate enough to take Christian Traditions as my initial undergraduate religious requirement, something I never thought I would refer to today; I’ve since found myself thinking about the values I studied, the same ones that nearly all the people my work affects live by.  

We all have our own goals, checkpoints, and finish lines, whether monitored by graphs or introspection. What remarkably brings me tranquility is our overlapping, yet innate drive to work hard enough to achieve what we desire. Our respective upbringings have all differed in just about every way, the small, unique facets making us value and believe in what we hold close to us. 

While transitioning to the East Coast to pursue high finance appears to be a vastly inverse goal to delivering traditional Catholic values to the community around the South Bay, one might be able to see our common ground after such an experience. Our business school teaches us how to characterize our drive, just as the Church does as well for hundreds of thousands here. How we end up expressing our actions afterwards is the true test of our holistic development.

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