The School of Business at UCR has a vast network of nearly 20,000 alumni! Whether you are living in the area, across the country, or abroad, there are many ways to keep in close touch with the Highlander community. There are many ways to get involved and give back to the School of Business. Explore our engagement opportunities, share your stories, and more.
Featured Alumni Stories
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February 13, 2025
What Do Play-Doh and Data Analytics Have in Common?
During her first year at the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management (AGSM), Camila Chaves Naranjo ’23 MBA was introduced to data analysis, “and I felt it was an area that I could have a better career,” she says. “I was passionate about the topic and ready to learn.
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January 14, 2025
Popular Pop-Up Greeting Card Company Prospers
While shopping for cards and gifts for friends, Claire Yuan ’18 says, “I found greeting cards in stores to be plain, and I spent a lot of time looking for the right gift to pair with them. I thought if there was a product that combined both a card and gift, it would save time and make gifting more efficient.” This epiphany came while she was earning an MBA at UCR’s A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, and she realized her classmates felt the same. “That’s when I decided to create LoveEcho Cards,” says Yuan, who is originally from Shenyang in northeast China and currently lives in
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January 13, 2025
Straight Talk: What It Really Takes to Run a Restaurant
When asked when and why Mahmoud “Mike” Hemood ’20 created his Baba’s Hot Chicken restaurant, the answer begins well before it became a popular Riverside eatery: “I started Baba’s on accident. There was no intention to start a brand, I was doing it purely for fun while I finished college. My very first sale was May 8, 2019, when I was selling sandwiches out of my apartment,” says Hemood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in accounting at the UCR School of Business. Today, Baba’s brick-and-mortar is in the Riverside Food Lab—a food hall with many
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October 30, 2024
Executive Fellow Jeff Paul ’92 Is Back on Campus
By sharing a compelling narrative around the significance of the challenge coin, Jeff Paul ’92 explored its backstory and tied it to themes of organizational structure during his October 17 guest lecture in Professor Kyle Ingram’s BUS 107 course. “Jeff demonstrated how a firm understanding of concepts discussed in this course, particularly around key theories of motivation, can contribute to building a business foundation,” says Ingram, assistant teaching professor of management, adding that Paul drew from Ingram’s assigned reading of Edgar Schein’s “Three Cultures of Management” framework
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September 09, 2024
Finding Her Footing
Following clothing trends has been a lifelong passion for UCR Business alumna Jordie Katcher — one that led to her becoming vice president of Women’s Global Sport Apparel at Nike.
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August 30, 2024
Speed. Agility. Performance.
For Akshay Are ’24 MBA, coaching budding badminton players has been a way to share his love for the sport while helping others reach their hidden potential—on and off the court.
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July 12, 2024
Jinnatul Mumu ’24 MBA: Anti-Abuse Analyst at Snap Inc.
Based in the Seattle office of Snap Inc., MBA graduate Jinnatul Raihan Mumu ’24 is an anti-abuse analyst. “I am responsible for analyzing large data sets to identify bad actors, such as hackers, spammers, and others, and improve security defenses of the platform,” she says of her role at the company that boasts Snapchat as one of its products.
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April 30, 2024
‘People Are the Core of My Business’
Arun Surendra ’99, ’01 MBA arrived at the UCR School of Business to complete a four-year undergraduate degree, he soon found himself in an educational environment starkly different from what he had experienced in India.
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