Five SFSU alumni trace their first steps from campus to fulfilling careers
What does success look like? It doesn’t come in just one form. It might look like keeping a luxury hotel running smoothly, introducing the public to the wonders of the stars, building global developer communities, bringing opera into neighborhood parks or going to City Hall to fight for public health and immigrants.
What unites these far-flung paths isn’t a single major or career track. And it isn’t the destination: success. It’s the starting point.
SFSU.
At SFSU, students test ideas, change direction, find mentors and discover the work that feels like a calling. They gain technical expertise and something just as important: the ability to lead, collaborate, communicate and adapt. In classrooms, labs and studios. On rooftops at the observatory. At networking events. Through internships, fellowships and student organizations. The first steps happen here.
The alumni featured in the following pages traveled by different routes, but each began by saying yes — to a class, a professor, a campus opportunity. Whatever direction they chose, SFSU helped them translate their passion into purpose and begin their journey from the classroom to their destiny.
Kimberly Gallardo, B.S., ’19
Grant coordinator at San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development
Special Skills: Grassroots advocacy and leadership
SFSU Launchpad: School of Public Health, Willie L. Brown Jr. Fellowship, Dream Resource Center
At a university known for helping students transform their passions into action, Kimberly Gallardo represents a new generation. The Honduras native has advocated for immigrants from San Francisco City Hall to the U.S. Capitol.
Gallardo stumbled upon a Public Health class while attending SFSU in the years preceding the COVID pandemic. She wasn’t previously familiar with the concept, much less its status as a vital field of study. With support from faculty, she changed her major to Public Health and got on track to graduate as quickly as possible.
“I met this really amazing professor named Ramon Castellblanch, and he totally changed my life,” Gallardo says. “He was the biggest mentor to me. He made a huge impact on understanding policies, how they impact us, what they do to communities, especially for people of color.”
Gallardo is a two-time winner of the Continue the Dream for Academic Excellence Scholarship, an SFSU-founded endeavor which raises its funds with volunteers swimming to Alcatraz. She also landed an SFSU Willie L. Brown Jr. Fellowship, spending two years as an aide to San Francisco Sup. Malia Cohen, while working another job on weekends, volunteering in the community and advocating for an expanded Dream Resource Center on campus.
“It paid off,” Gallardo says. “I have a really good job now because of my degree.”
Ryan Marchand, B.A., ’08
Director, Department of Engagement and Connectivity at the San Francisco Opera
Special Skills: Fluency in French, acting, directing, event planning, cultural leadership
SFSU Launchpad: French Program, Theatre Arts Department, Study Abroad
Ryan Marchand draws from his Gator education every working day at the San Francisco Opera. Whether it’s his major in French, minor in Drama or study-abroad experience, SFSU plays a role.
Marchand leads the team that takes the opera outside the opera house: into public libraries, community centers and parks for free and low-cost performances, workshops and talks.
“My coursework in and out of my major shaped my sense of ethics today. My sense of values is shaped by a lot of my coursework at SF State,” he says. “I feel like my position at the San Francisco Opera is an amalgamation of all my experience. It uses all of my sociological and cultural work.”
At SFSU, Marchand would spend up to 30 hours a week in the Theatre Arts Department. Tony Award-nominated Professor Barbara Damashek trained him in musical theatre. Professor Yukihiro Goto introduced Marchand to Asian theatre, proving valuable last year when the San Francisco Opera debuted “The Monkey King,” an acclaimed new opera based on one of the great stories of Chinese literature.
“Every professor had a different approach or a different angle,” says Marchand, who also acts in plays in the Bay Area on the side. “You got a varied perspective that you wouldn’t necessarily get in a conservatory setting.”
Marchand’s experience studying abroad at Aix-Marseille Université in France taught him much more than another language.
“Being immersed in a foreign language is such a humbling experience,” he says. “Being able to speak or study in a different language gives you a different sense of perspective. It gives you the ability to look at one thing with multiple lenses.”
Shriya Dandin, B.S., ’24
Senior Associate Developer Relations Advocate at Workday
Special Skills: Community and network building, event planning
SFSU Launchpad: Engineering Students Advisory Board, SF Hacks, Association for Computing Machinery, Society of Women Engineers
In 2023, Shriya Dandin, president of the SFSU Engineering Student Advisory Board, invited the enterprise AI platform Workday to campus. At that event, she asked the company representative about internships and landed an interview to become a developer relations intern. Nearly three years later, she’s a full-time senior associate developer relations advocate at the company.
She’s the liaison for the Workday Developer community, people who build on the Workday development platform. She talks to developers in the Workday ecosystem and relays their feedback to the product teams. She also produces content and resources, and plans events to improve the overall developer experience. She’s excited to go to more conferences and host more international events to better connect with the developers building on the platform.
“I love talking about developer relations! It’s quite niche, but it’s essentially an extension of what I was doing at SF State,” she says. As a student leader in several student clubs, she organized events connecting SFSU students with like-minded peers and local industry.
“I wouldn’t change a thing. I think it was just so special to have that sort of SFSU community. We had so many fun times together, and we also worked so hard to make every single thing happen,” she says fondly, noting that she’s still connected with her SFSU network.
Jacque Benitez, B.A., ’11
Planetarium Program Manager, Morrison Planetarium at California Academy of Sciences
Special Skills: In-person and virtual education, mentorship, team building
SFSU Launchpad: Physics and Astronomy Club, SFSU Observatory docent, Center for Science and Mathematics Education
Lifelong astronomy enthusiast Jacque Benitez came to SFSU as an undeclared major. Discouraging high school physics experiences made her question her qualifications for her dream degree. Fortunately, it just took one introductory Physics class at SFSU for her to realize it was all about having the right teachers.
“[Professor Adrienne] Cool was a huge advocate, allowing me the space to not only explore astronomy, but pointing me toward being an observatory docent,” Benitez says of SFSU’s planetarium and observatory director. “The observatory is where I really fell in love with education and teaching.”
As the Morrison Planetarium program manager, Benitez extends beyond ensuring public shows in the 75-foot dome are running smoothly. She works with the engineers tinkering with the technology, coordinates events, collaborates with the visualization studio developing films and partners with many departments in the Academy of Sciences to produce educational opportunities for visitors. And that’s not to mention the work she’s done in other Academy roles since 2012.
“I love being able to explore with people and be able to explain and see their ‘aha’ moment and joy, like when they look through a telescope,” she explains. It’s something she first realized as an observatory docent on the roof of Thornton Hall, and that has led to a long and fulfilling career.
Firas Muheisen, B.A., ’19
Director of Rooms at Hotel Nia
Special Skills: Management, operations, cultural competency
SFSU Launchpad: Hospitality, Tourism and Event Management Department
When Firas Muheisen was 16, he moved from Jordan to the East Bay. As a teenager in need of spending money, he got a job at Extended Stay America. “My parents wanted me to become a doctor,” he says. But after eight years with the company, it became clear that hospitality, not medicine, was his passion.
“[Jordanians are] known for being extremely hospitable, and that’s ingrained in us,” he says. “Hospitality in general was a perfect match for me."
After attending Chabot College in Hayward, Muheisen transferred to SFSU’s Hospitality Management program in 2017, hoping that a degree would further his career. His hunch was correct — it opened doors to a network of hospitality professionals.
“We had a lot of guest speakers coming in — hotel managers, GMs, event planners, all of that,” he says. “A lot of networking events were thrown, so you were able to network with people and ask questions. The hotel industry is very small, so that was a big opportunity.”
One of the guest speakers ended up awarding him a scholarship. Years later, when Muheisen interviewed for a job at San Francisco’s historic Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, that same man was the hotel’s general manager. Muheisen got the job and eventually became the hotel’s director of housekeeping. In 2023, the California Hotel and Lodging Association named him Outstanding Manager of the Year.
Today, Muheisen holds an executive-level role at Hotel Nia in Menlo Park, overseeing housekeeping and front-office operations while making decisions that shape the hotel’s overall performance and championing the needs of his team. He credits his success to a simple principle: take care of your guests and your employees.
“If you do it right and you do it honestly and you lead by example and just be genuine about it, you’ll be OK,” he says.