Alumni

English Department Alumni Take Interdisciplinary Approach to Branding Toyota Financial Services

August 5, 2010 By admin

Although Tatsumi Paredes (Class of ’98, B.A., English, magna cum laude) and Maria Tirado (Class of ’86, B.A. English lit/communications) attended California State University, Dominguez Hills nearly a decade apart, they both agreed that the education they received was instrumental in propelling them to their current positions at Toyota Financial Services (TFS). Tirado, who serves as TFS’s brand manager, recently welcomed Paredes to her department as the new brand administrator.

Tatsumi Paredes (at left) and Maria Tirado are the brains behind an external branding campaign for Toyota Financial Services; photo by Joanie Harmon

“The best thing about Cal State Dominguez Hills is that the class sizes were pretty small, so we were able to get individual attention in terms of what we were learning,” says Paredes. “It was a good opportunity to work with other students and professors directly. It’s pretty amazing how closely that translates to the real world.

“If you go to any large university, I don’t think you’ll get that intimate interaction. You’re in a crowd… listening to a lecture. But we all know that in the real world, we’ve got to participate in meetings. We don’t just sit there and listen, for the most part. So I think that’s a great advantage that Dominguez Hills has.”

Tirado says that the opportunities that CSU Dominguez Hills gives its students was instrumental in helping her achieve her career goal as a writer, which led to her current position.

“What I liked was how small and intimate [the campus] was,” says the former Bull’s Eye (now The Bulletin) reporter. “It was such an honor to interview Sally Ride for the school newspaper. I felt that’s what Dominguez afforded me – access to things that maybe a larger university could not give me.”

Providing a way to achieve dreams is just what Tirado and Paredes are in the business of as leaders of the brand team for TFS. They are currently developing an external brand strategy to encourage more automobile buyers to use Toyota’s financial services. Tirado believes that the success of their internal campaign will ensure its favorable reception by the public.

“What we’ve learned is that we’re not going to reach anybody out there if we don’t believe it here first,” says Tirado, who has worked at Toyota since 1996. “Our product is really an experience. Our people are what differentiate us from all the [competition]. They go through extensive training on how to treat our customers… to deliver service that is simple, proactive, and personal.”

Paredes says that since she began her career at Toyota three years ago as senior dealer market planner, she immediately recognized the company’s culture of integrity in her colleagues and their products.

“It was energizing to work with so many people who believe in what we do, who provide great service, and who believe that overall we’re making a positive difference in people’s lives,” she says.

Tirado says that while TFS’s products–finance and lease contracts, and extended service coverage–are not as “sexy” as the Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles that they sell, the organization “really is about the relationship we have with the customers who own those cars,” and with the dealers who sell them.

“Dealers can choose any number of financial institutions to get the funding for the customer,” she says. “But we do have a good market share right now, and we have a lot of dealers who are loyal to TFS. They see TFS as part of the Toyota family, so there’s an incredible amount of cachet and trust there.”

Paredes says that although many customers are focused on getting the best rate possible when financing an automobile purchase, she enjoys the challenge of building brand recognition for TFS.

“[Customers] may not necessarily ask for us by name, and that’s one of the challenges for us,” says Paredes, who minored in communications at CSU Dominguez Hills. “I love being part of the TFS brand department and developing an external brand strategy. It’s really a way to let [consumers] know what a great brand we have and how we stand behind the experience that we give and the products that we sell.”

Comparing the divergent career paths that led them to Toyota, Paredes and Tirado credit their success with capitalizing on wherever opportunity led them. Tirado was introduced to Toyota while working as a proofreader and copywriter for a local design firm that was contracted by Toyota. She says that the variety of courses she took while at CSU Dominguez Hills was also instrumental in helping her develop her skills as a marketer.

“If you want to be in marketing, clearly you need to take some marketing courses,” she says. “But at the same time, take courses in psychology, art history, music, philosophy, history, all the arts. I think marketing is made up of all those disciplines. Look at it in terms of enlarging your frame of reference.

“Sometimes [in marketing] you have to be a psychologist. Sometimes you have to be a historian. All of that will come out in how you communicate. It’s about communication, but it’s also about understanding.”

Paredes began her 13 years of experience in the automotive industry as an intern in the customer service call center at Nissan while still a student at CSU Dominguez Hills.

“I think until you actually work in a company, there is no way you can really imagine how it’s going to be,” she says. “Students should consider doing internships, and just talking to people. Talk to people who are already working. Ask them detailed questions about what they do, what they like about it, what they did to get there.”

Echoing the manner in which Toyota has developed its internal brand recognition in order to bolster its external image, Tirado says that students should also consider what they are developing as their personal “brand” while preparing to graduate and enter the workforce.

“When you look at what the definition of ‘brand’ is, we also kind of represent our own brands here,” she says. “When you’re a student, you’re trying to absorb everything you can. When you go out into the world, whether to a job or a career, you have to ask yourself, what is [my] brand about? It takes time to build a brand, but then also as you work, it takes time for others to build trust in a brand.

“There are attributes I [think of] for the ‘Tatsumi Paredes’ brand: responsibility, intelligence, warmth, sensitivity. When I think of Toyota, I think of quality, dependability, reliability. I think that’s what every person on this planet should ask themselves: What are my attributes and how will I contribute them?”

For more information on the English department at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

For more information on the communications department at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

Fighting Youth Violence Before It Starts: Students and Professor of Teacher Education Deliver Messages of Mentoring, Collaboration

July 29, 2010 By admin

Every year since Richard Gordon’s 17-year-old son, Kwame, was fatally shot at a party in 2006, the California State University, Dominguez Hills professor of teacher education has honored his memory with an annual dinner to raise funds for a scholarship at the Waldorf School in Altadena. The school, which Kwame Gordon attended from kindergarten through the eighth grade, provides its students with an education that helps them grasp academics through imaginative and interdisciplinary methods.

In a similar way, Richard Gordon seeks to help his neighbors understand that violence is not unique to low-income communities and underserved youth. A major component of Kwame’s memorial are guest speakers, many of whom are his father’s faculty colleagues and their students at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who provide information and testimonials on how violence has impacted their lives, and their recovery from the trauma.

“The Waldorf community feels that they are part of the broader community, they don’t feel like they are isolated or that the troubles are on the outside,” says Gordon. “They just want to know how to get better involved and what they can do to make the world a better place.”

At this year’s memorial, alumni from the Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding (NCRP) program at CSU Dominguez Hills were invited by Nancy Erbe, associate professor, NCRP, to be guest speakers. Last month. Ebony Martin (Class of ’10, M.A., NCRP), Sarah Moreau (Class of ’00, M.A., NCRP), and Kiana Moten (Class of ’09, M.A., NCRP) all related their personal experiences, how they were able to cope with their losses, and how they are working to prevent further acts of violence.

Erbe’s international experiences as a mediator and expert on conflict resolution in the Balkans and the Middle East led her to realize that back home in Los Angeles “many were dying in L.A. ‘wars’ and violence.” Upon arriving at the university in 2004, she began to find ways to do her part to help prevent the spread of violence.

“When I came to CSU Dominguez Hills, I met many students who have tragically lost family members to local violence and also students who had been gang affiliated but were fortunately able to leave [the gangs] and build good lives,” she says. “I began searching for ways to do my part in preventing such tragedy.”

“NCRP training teaches several alternative tools for conflict resolution and peacebuilding, including those that are effective in responding to violence,” says Erbe. “Most importantly, it builds the conscious community needed to say no to a culture that glorifies and rewards violence.”

Moreau had a first-hand glimpse of violence in her neighborhood and school. Although not involved in gangs herself, her life was directly affected by rampant gang activity in her South Central community in Los Angeles. She says that when it comes to raising community awareness, it is wrong to assume that only gang-involved youth are at risk.

“While [young people] travel to and from school, they are targeted by drug dealers and gang members,” she says. “In junior high school, I recall walking to and from school through several gang territories and being jumped on by gang members because of the neighborhood I lived in. I’ve lost many childhood friends to death or the prison system. In the last 10 years, there have been several school-related murders from preschool to university campuses. Unfortunately, all youth are at risk for violence.”

In 2003, Moreau designed a 10-week after school self-esteem program titled “Imagine Me in We” for PasadenaLEARNS. The curriculum, which she wrote for 5th and 6th graders, met Pasadena Unified School District Language Arts standards and focused on individual responsibility, positive attitude, and teamwork. Moreau says that citizens can help prevent violence among youth by serving as role models who embody these qualities.

“Anyone can be a role model,” she says. “Citizens may consider…serving as active members of organizations that [educate] our youth on positive alternatives to criminal careers and divert them from becoming first-time offenders in the juvenile justice system.”

Moreau is currently president of the NCRP Affinity Association at CSU Dominguez Hills. The organization is co-hosting a conference on conflict resolution with the Office of Outreach and Information Services on Sept. 24 in the Loker Student Union. Local junior high, high school, and community college students are scheduled to attend the conference, which will feature guest speaker Forrest (Woody) Mosten, an internationally recognized mediation expert.

Recent NCRP graduate Ebony Martin conducted research on how collaborative efforts can reduce the number of juveniles who join gangs. She says there is a need to attack the underlying causes that attract youth to join gangs in the first place, having found that most gang members begin their involvement as very young children.

“Juvenile gangs are a serious problem throughout the nation, threatening public safety and damaging young lives not only in large urban areas but also in many smaller cities and rural areas” Martin states. “Joining a gang can have serious, far-reaching and long-lasting consequences for all concerned, including a prison sentence. There is an urgent need to mobilize the creative energies of the entire community in a comprehensive campaign to identify the nature and extent of the gang problem, to prevent at-risk youth from joining gangs, to intervene with gang-involved youth to redirect their lives on a positive course, to suppress crime, and to respond to the needs of crime victims and witnesses. The ultimate goal is to prevent youth from joining gangs to further prevent violence and obtain lasting peace within neighborhoods and communities.”

Martin believes collaboration between parents and teachers in watching for early signs of gang involvement in children is a key strategy to preventing them from joining gangs.

“Parents must also understand their importance of being a positive role model because a lot of what children do is learned in the home,” she says. “Parental involvement with teachers can help prevent problems of truancy, and community education on gang culture will help parents and teachers to identify early signs of gang involvement which can lead to reduced violence.”

Kiana Moten had just begun the NCRP program at CSU Dominguez Hills when her husband was shot and killed three blocks away from home by unknown and as yet, unfound perpetrators. The mother of a 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, with whom she was pregnant when her husband was killed, Moten says that she is already planting the seeds of awareness and prevention of at-risk behavior in her children.

“There are a lot of things they understand now,” says Moten, who is applying to serve as a volunteer mediator for Centinela Youth Services. “My son was playing with his Nintendo DSi and got mad because he didn’t win. He hit the [game unit] against the cart. A simple concept is that it’s not okay to hit. I discuss the importance of speaking with words [not violent behavior] and expressing yourself verbally. These are issues they face now in preschool. If we could start at the ground level with coping mechanisms on how to handle anger, this is how we can start [preventing violence].”

Martin conducted her research on community collaboration by studying gang intervention programs in the cities of Carson and Paramount. She hopes to become a community advocate in her hometown of Carson and says that, “Mentoring youth is extremely important as it’s critical to remain in open dialogue with them and understand their needs, wants and concerns, and help them stay on a positive path.”

Erbe says that all youth are at risk because of the way that violence is romanticized and glorified for them, particularly for young males, in cultures around the world.

“Without a close trusted adult mentor who can help make reality-based decisions and [provide] hope for their futures, too many of our youth are living on the edge of semi-suicidal existences that flirt with many dangers,” she says.

“Many youth have no one to talk to or turn to. We cannot expect parents to do all that is needed because youth need to experiment and individuate from their parents, no matter how loving [their relationship is]. We can all commit to mentoring at least one youth not in our immediate family. Familes, churches, and communities can ‘adopt’ youth who have no one.”

In the months after his son Kwame was killed, Richard Gordon established a mentoring program at CSU Dominguez Hills for students from urban high schools in Los Angeles called Transition Institutes. The program, which has been renamed Ways to Enhance Achievement and Resiliency in Education (WE ARE), focuses on self-esteem, time management, conflict resolution and looking to the future. The program was hosted by CSU Dominguez Hills in 2006, 2008, and 2009, and will be held on campus again this fall. Gordon says that the experience of working with WE ARE attendees is inspiring, but there remains a great need for continued education and community outreach.

“You don’t know what forces come to bear on a particular night at a particular event when a tragedy happens,” says Gordon. “It’s more than just black and white, good and bad. There’s a whole constellation of things that take place. We need to slow down and see that.”

For information on the NCRP program at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

For more information on the NCRP Affinity Association at CSU Dominguez Hills, contact Moreau at (310) 991-0645.

Geetanjali Ashok: International MBA Student Takes Team to First Place in Business Plan Contest

July 29, 2010 By admin

Geetanjali Ashok, an MBA student at California State University, Dominguez Hills, won first prize with her team in a business plan competition during the Emerging Minority Business Leaders (EMBL) Program held last month at West Liberty University in West Liberty, W. Va. Ashok’s team, which was made up of students from UC Berkeley, Hunter College, Jackson State University, Miami International University, and North Carolina Agriculture & Technical State University, has been invited to deliver their presentation on a glucose monitoring device for diabetics to the US Department of Commerce this fall at the annual conference of the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds in October in order to find investors who may invest up to $1 million to launch the business.

Ashok, who earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting at Tilkamanjhi Bhagalpur University in Bhagalpur, Bihar, India, says that the experience and skills she gained as a certified public accountant in India proved to be invaluable in the development of the financial component of the group’s plan for Excel-A-Sense, a product that uses microelectromechanical (MEMS) systems to keep track of a patient’s glucose levels.

“When I work on a team or in a group, I learn about what we do here and use my experience of what I had [in India],” says Ashok. “I was the person who took care of all the finances [in our business plan]. I think it helped my team because they didn’t have to think about the finances; it was my job. The judges were very impressed by the figures: how we monitored them, and how we knew in the first three years we would not have any profit because we were launching a product. I calculated the return in equity and how much we would pay our investors when selling our business, which was the true [profit].”

Ashok says that she was inspired to choose the patent for Excel-A-Sense from the choices offered to the students for personal reasons.

“My mom and my dad are diabetic patients,” she says. “I used to see them prick themselves frequently with all the pain. When you’re diabetic, your wounds don’t heal so fast, so there’s always a chance of infection. I was just thinking of something that would be of help to so many people.”

Ashok also serves as a teacher’s assistant for the MBA Online program and says she is very impressed by the faculty’s level of commitment and professionalism.

“I have taken online classes elsewhere,” says Ashok, “but here, the classes are more connected, the teachers are more dedicated to them. They answer your questions, they know what you need help with and they give you immediate feedback. If you are stuck on any question, you can email them and in a couple of hours, you will get an answer.”

Ashok, who is taking a hybrid of online and classroom courses through the MBA Online program, says that being able to experience classroom learning and interacting with students from across the globe who are attending CSU Dominguez Hills remotely has been an enriching experience.

“I was given a team project, a case study,” Ashok says. “One of my teammates was in the Middle East and one was in Poland. We collaborated [using] each other’s knowledge. People from all over the world can be on one platform here.”

Ashok says the diversity of the student population is also an opportunity to prepare her and her classmates to enter a global workforce. They are learning various cultural etiquette and customs from each other and that knowledge can be a critical asset while conducting business in other countries.

“When you are dealing with someone in Asia, you have to be familiar to them,” she says. “They must know you, then they’ll do business. Here we do business just talking to strangers. In Japan, they prefer to talk to men, not the ladies. It’s different in America; a woman can represent herself or her company.”

Although she was not familiar with CSU Dominguez Hills when she arrived on campus, Ashok says she was quickly put at ease by the familial atmosphere.

“Everybody is so friendly, everybody is so welcoming,” she says. “There are many students from different backgrounds. It’s a very good place to interact. The teachers and professors all are very friendly here. At every step, they help you out.

“There are many helpful professors, especially the MBA director, Mr. Ken Poertner. He’s very motivating, he’s very encouraging. I took two of Prof. Kirti Celly’s classes; she just inspires me. She’s a really good teacher, she knows her subject. She gives you personal feedback, she tells you what you have to do, which way you are going.”

For more information on the online MBA program at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

Gloria Lopez: History Major Awarded Getty Multicultural Internship

July 15, 2010 By admin

When Gloria Lopez was in the seventh grade at Virgil Middle School in Los Angeles, her teacher taught her and her classmates that history was “more than just memorizing dates and events, it is about understanding different cultures and their experiences.” Later at Belmont High School, her passion for 20th century European and Latin American history was encouraged by her tenth grade teacher.

“History is the one subject that I find the most intriguing,” says Lopez. “Back in the tenth grade I found it interesting to learn about World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, about Hitler, and about communism. Now, I enjoy learning the stories of the people that lived during these wars and what their lives were like.”

The history major at California State University, Dominguez Hills participated in the Practicum in Applied History program last semester as a research intern at the Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War in Los Angeles. This summer, she was awarded a Getty Multicultural Internship, which supports summer interns at various institutions. She is transcribing the documentation of Wende’s Ferris/Komov Poster Collection, as well as cataloging the collection. The project involves providing descriptions, photographing the posters, and writing comprehensive biographies on the artists.

“It is my job to put in writing the message that the artist was conveying in the context of life in the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s and in the Russian Federation in the early 1990’s,” says Lopez. “In every upper division history class I have taken, my professors have helped me develop my research and writing skills. We are taught to critically analyze historical documents in the context of their day and we are trained to clearly communicate a thesis, both orally and in writing. I get to put these skills to the test on a daily basis as a research intern.”

Lopez says that the Wende is focused on “preserving a record of a disappearing culture” of the former Warsaw Pact states with an emphasis on life in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Although the fall of the Berlin Wall took place in 1989, she notes that to the younger generation, the event is ancient history.

“Life behind the Iron Curtain is being rapidly historicized,” she says. “If one visits a museum like the Getty Center and/or LACMA, [they can see] art of cultures that have been gone for hundreds of years,” she says. “At the Wende Museum, one finds artifacts of everyday life from no more than fifty years ago. You can still go to Germany and find some of these artifacts – such as radios, old magazines, and soldiers’ uniforms – hiding in an attic.”

Lopez says that her internship, which has included duties such as assisting with museum tours, gathering objects to be displayed, and helping to put together a website for an upcoming exhibition, has been “fun!”

“I went into the internship with no expectations, [but] full of a curiosity to learn,” she says. “I have had the opportunity to meet people who remember living in Berlin when the Wall was up; I found it fascinating to hear their stories. These kinds of links make history intriguing.”

Looking ahead to graduate or law school, Lopez says that her experiences as a history major at CSU Dominguez Hills and an intern at the Wende Museum have helped her to “think like a researcher.”

“This particular skill will make being a graduate student much easier,” she says. “The most exciting thing is knowing that you have contributed to the study of history. It makes me feel that I am a part of something.”

For more information about the history department at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

Katlin Choi: Grad Student Awarded Fulbright to University of Macau

July 15, 2010 By admin

Katlin Choi, a graduate student in the Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding program at California State University, Dominguez Hills, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Scholarship that will allow her to travel abroad to Macau to teach English as a foreign language during the 2010-11 academic year.

Having earned her bachelor’s degree in political science at UCLA specializing in urban studies, Choi will be working in the English Language Center at the University of Macau (UM) with other Fulbright students to organize and implement extracurricular programs such as field trips and a weeklong English Festival, in English for UM students and assisting with English improvement classes each semester.

Choi is one of over 1,500 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2010-11 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The Los Angeles resident says that she was drawn to the Macau Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) program because she wanted to experience the nation’s blending of Portuguese and Chinese cultures and to regain her proficiency in speaking Cantonese. A native of Hong Kong, Choi says that although people tend to expect her to be an authority on Chinese culture, her experiences should be contextualized within an immigrant perspective.

“The Fulbright ETA program will enable me to build a microculture of peace and cultural understanding with the Macau faculty and students through an appreciation of the English language and my unique perspective and experiences as a Chinese-American woman,” says Choi. “I look to share both the American culture through my unique lens as a diasporan, as well as the English language.”

Choi, who grew up and lives in L.A.’s Chinatown, says that she also looks forward to exploring Macau, which once was a colony of Portugal and is a hybrid of both Chinese and European culture.

“Since it is an urban area, albeit small, widely known and advertised as the Las Vegas of the East, I’m excited to explore it on foot and through all my senses,” says Choi. “As as I did with downtown Los Angeles when I was a kid, I think the best way to get to know a place is through my stomach, chowing down with local residents, inhaling the smells, enjoying the scenery, and listening to the locals’ conversations.”

Choi recalls rebelling against the traditional role of a daughter within the Chinese culture, through her experiences at school and the influence of her father.

“My obedience to my parents was tempered by a strict sense of right and wrong, nurtured by my father when I was young,” she says. “He taught me independence of thought and I developed my sense of justice and code of ethics. These values allowed me to withstand incidents of discrimination and sexism from some of my peers, my teachers and my counselors. From the same pool of people, I established wonderful friendships with a diverse and supportive group who taught me to look within myself for the strength and the power to change not only my world, but the world around me.”

Choi is the community partnerships coordinator at the Center for Community Engagement at CSU Long Beach. She works with faculty and community organizations to develop service-learning partnerships. Her experiences include tutoring low-income students at Occidental College’s Upward Bound Program, serving as a mentor for middle school female students through Women and Youth Supporting Each Other, and acting as a college advisor to disadvantaged high school students at UCLA’s Early Academic Outreach Program. She decided to take advantage of the CSU fee waiver for employees and chose Dominguez Hills for its NCRP program, an area that she feels will help in her future endeavors to advocate for social justice.

“Conflicts occur every day to everyone,” she notes. “The program is about instilling deeper self-awareness and recognizing and building upon one’s own strengths [while] developing a set of skills that can be applicable to everyday life, and learning how to be a reflective practitioner while applying those skills.”

Choi looks forward to exploring and understanding the higher education system in Macau as a Fulbright ETA. She hopes to use her expertise with curriculum development and community partnerships to enhance students’ learning outcomes and promote cultural understanding through storytelling. She cites her experience working with high school students in writing workshops for College Summit as an example of how the ability to communicate common experiences can be empowering to youth, particularly those who are academically mid-tier from low-income communities.

“[The students] were able to identify their sources of strength, reflect on various challenges they faced, and speak their own truth…in the stories of their lives,” she says. “I felt deeply appreciative of my position in empowering these highly deserving individuals.

“Through the Fulbright ETA program, I seek to further empower myself and the communities I work with by learning and sharing more ways to build and promote micro-cultures of peace and cultural understanding through the power of authentic storytelling,” she says.

For information on the Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding program at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

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