What do Disney, Apple, Google, Genentech, Lockheed Martin, Salesforce and Boeing all have in common? Besides being global brands that drive innovation and economic growth, they are among the companies that have hired large numbers of University of California alumni over the last quarter century.
The University, in collaboration with workforce data firm Lightcast, has just released a new data dashboard that tracks UC alumni employment since 2000.
With 84,000 new UC degree-holders entering the workforce this summer — joining another 2.6 million alumni in California and the nation — the dashboard shows that UC degrees fuel high-growth careers, often in the industries that have made California the world’s fourth-largest economy, including biotech, computing, engineering, finance, education, health care, and the entertainment industry.
“From the first day a student arrives on a UC campus, they are being prepared by our faculty and staff to be educated citizens and California’s workforce of tomorrow,” said UC Provost Katherine S. Newman. “This new data is further evidence of UC’s commitment to connecting academic excellence with workforce development. Our graduates climb the economic ladder because they leave our campuses with rigorous and experiential learning experiences to lead in their fields.”
Spotlight: UC Berkeley alum Veronica Sandoval
“I would not be in this role today if I hadn’t attended UC.”
Veronica Sandoval, UC Berkeley Class of 1997
Director, Cross-Portfolio Philanthropy, Genentech
UC Berkeley alum Veronica Sandoval brought multiple advanced degrees to her role as the director of cross-portfolio philanthropy at Genentech.
“Many of the people I interact with at Genentech are UC alums. When someone mentions they went to UC, it changes your perception to OK, I know that this person is going to be active and engaged and we’re going to be productive,” says Veronica Sandoval, the director of cross-portfolio philanthropy at Genentech. “One of the things I’ve noticed is the caliber of education that you get with UC, and the caliber of students who gravitate to UC. I really believe that UC instills curiosity and strong work ethic in its students, along with the ability to break a problem down and look at it from different directions.”
“I cannot believe I get to do the job I do at Genentech. Really, I pinch myself every day. As a member of the Giving and Social Impact team, my job is to think about the work Genentech is doing in advancing innovative medicines and how we can partner with communities to address health disparities and ensure patients get the access they need to those medications. I would not be in this role today if I hadn’t attended UC.”
Sandoval came to the job with a Ph.D. in neuropharmacology and two postdoc roles under her belt in addition to a law degree and her B.A. in molecular cell biology. But she grew up far from the halls of higher ed. The Mexican American daughter of migrant farmworkers, Sandoval was raised in Oxnard, California, with Spanish as her first language, and her parents still do not speak English. Her mother completed third grade, and her father had a first-grade education. “My dad’s dream was for us to finish high school because he believed that would allow us to get a job in an office that was air conditioned, instead of picking strawberries for a living,” she said.
Sandoval relied on her teachers and counselors for guidance. “My counselor told me, ‘You need to apply to UC Berkeley.’ And I was like, ‘Where is Berkeley?’” she laughs. “At the end of the day, it came down to those mentors and my parents instilling the idea that education was the best investment that I could make. As the first in my family to go to college, I also knew I was a role model for my siblings, my cousins and the rest of my community who saw me and thought , if Veronica can do this, maybe we can too.”
UC was her exposure to a world of new ideas and people from all different backgrounds, but Sandoval credits UC Berkeley’s training in writing as a key lifelong gift: “They were teaching us how to think analytically, how to digest information, how to communicate that information. Even in the STEM fields, if you can’t communicate your ideas, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are.”