In this episode I interviewed Hunter Smith. Hunter recently graduated with an International Business major and History minor at the University of California, San Diego. He’s joined the KSW Consulting team as a Marketing Program Manager. As an involved member of UC San Diego’s campus business community, he served as Executive Director with the Future Business Leaders of America-Phi Beta Lambda and the UCSD Business Council. An avid sports fan, Hunter also works as an online Contributing Motorsports Editor of Road & Track magazine online, covering auto racing in the US, Europe, and around the world.
A close friend and a trusted peer in previous professional background, Hunter is an incredible friend and an interesting leader. I had the pleasure of working with him in both Phi Beta Lambda and Business Council in different ways over my time in the organization.
If you want to know more about Hunter you can check out his twitter here! Or check him out on LinkedIn here!
In this episode, I interviewed Janna Lao. Janna Lao is a transfer to UC San Diego from Santa Monica College. She is currently pursuing a degree in Economics while minoring in Business. While in pursuit of her degree, she maintains the role of President of Global Business Brigades, Executive Vice President of Business Council and general member in Phi Beta Lambda and Intergenerational Connection.
Janna is one of the more passionate leaders I have met in my time throughout college. Coming from a diverse background and being very extroverted, her insights from this episode really makes one think about what it means to truly listen to the ones you lead and I find a common path between our leadership styles.
In this episode, I interview Erik Hanzlick a senior undergraduate student at UC San Diego studying International business. Throughout his academic career, he was a vice president for Delta Sigma Pi, president of Triton Consulting Group, and president and founder of Business Council at UC San Diego. During his early professional career, he’s had the opportunity to intern at Qualcomm as an IT Project Manager, and most recently, at IBM as a blockchain product manager. He is also the founder of Exalton, an enterprise file sharing, and synchronization (EFSS) platform built to create trust between parties managing sensitive or high-value digital assets.
Personally, I know Erik as one of the most inspirational and ambitious leaders I have met in my time at UC San Diego. Within this episode, we explore what it means to be a leader in a collaborative, and visionary space, and in particular Erik’s viewpoint of what defines his leadership over the course of the past few years.
So how do I begin writing this? For a while now I have been convinced that I wanted to create a community, but a community of what? About what? After getting inspired by my close friend I decided on a community of leaders. However, I didn’t want to create a community of just one kind of leader. I was convinced to create a community of those who wanted to share, who were open to new ideas, and ultimately wanted to have a conversation.
But a conversation about what? Leadership? Yes, leadership! And yes, I realize that there are so many different types of leadership. We are taught and told that leadership comes in so many different forms. Personally, I think this is the beauty of leadership. However, while we are constantly told about the different types, I feel like many times, the story of how people view leadership isn’t told – or is more formalized to the point where it is no longer a personal story.
So I wanted to think of how we could make this a thing? How could we take this idea of personalized viewpoints of leadership and put that together into a space that viewed it and understood it? I started to think about the places that I usually had long conversations about what it means to be a leader and where they seemed the most natural/casual. I also started to think about what environment I wanted to create for the people I was interviewing.
When I lived in the Bay Area I remembered going to cafes and sitting there drinking my coffee, and feeling this hum through the air. Each cafe had its own vibe and feeling, much similar to how each leader has their own tone and approach. I also remember listening to those around me, of so many different backgrounds, talking about so many different things and ways of life. It was almost like being involved in different cultures all at once, particularly as I went from place to place (such as going from Downtown Berkeley to the Financial District in San Francisco).
So this is where I realized that cafes are a hub of untapped potential. That these casual conversations sometimes produced the most incredible ideas and approaches to leadership and life that I could hear. As is I came upon the idea of forming Cafe Leadership in parallel to this idea. I’m excited to see where this journey into leadership will take me. From listening and interviewing those younger and older I hope to help others see different concepts, styles, and ideals of leadership and also the stories that spawn these types of leadership both in the present and the future.
Cafe Leadership 