Spring 2024 Alumni Dive Into Exciting Futures
This spring, a fresh cohort of SCET students graduated from UC Berkeley, already forging new paths into the entrepreneurial world. Part of these learners’ impressive backgrounds was forged with the help of knowledge and collaboration from SCET’s course, ENGIN 183 Product Management.
Instructed by AI product leader Derek Chan, Product Management involves giving students hands-on opportunities to design products, pitch to target markets and learn from industry professionals in a team environment.
Keep reading to hear from three exceptional Product Management alumni who are now venturing into their own dynamic futures.
Sepehr Khosravi
Sepehr took multiple hiatuses from school to work full-time, such as when he helped his family business, GiantTeddy, or when he supported product growth at Tesla. He joined Berkeley as a transfer student, completed SCET’s Product Management course as an exceptional student in Fall 2022 and then served as a course coordinator for subsequent semesters until graduating with a degree in data science in Spring 2024. He loves SCET courses, is a startup entrepreneur and aspires to be faculty at a community college or university in the future.
What was your experience like in the Product Management course?
“One of the best courses I’ve ever taken. I met some really cool people there and the professors were really awesome. I was a transfer student and I hadn’t taken a lot of courses that were smaller sizes before. I was really interested in product management, but I didn’t even know what that really [meant].
“I really loved how we got to work together to create a project — my first experience doing that. My family sells giant teddy bears so entrepreneurship has always been in my family, but I haven’t really gone towards it, so this experience made me realize I want to do startups or product management. It shifted the direction I wanted to take my career, and I ended up coordinating the course for the next two semesters.”
Why did you decide to facilitate?
“I love teaching, and I love this course. I learned a ton from [teaching] – working with Derek especially. I love that SCET has industry professionals rather than professors, because I learned so much from being able to work closely with them.”
What are your post-graduation plans?
“I want to eventually work on my own startup, but I’m starting off working at Coinbase as a startup engineer. I was debating whether to go into product management or software, but a lot of people recommended that you become really good with the software portion of things to be a really great product manager in the future, so I’m super excited to refine my technical skills for the next two years.
“I’ll also be teaching a product-building DeCal this upcoming semester under SCET. A lot of SCET courses are about coming up with ideas, so this focuses more on the building and execution – coding, launching software, and acquiring your first customer over the course of the semester.”
What are some memorable skills you learned from the Product Management course that influenced your career decisions?
“It made me realize that I love working with people – in software you work with people less, which is why I originally made the switch. I got a lot better at being able to present in front of people and pitch, and realized that I really enjoy persuasion.”
How does your background as a transfer student interact with your educational path?
“I really recommend any transfer student to take SCET courses. Coming into Berkeley it’s difficult to find groups in large classes. Because [SCET courses] create a group that you work with all semester long, you end up becoming friends with those people and build a relationship with your professor – that’s the part I really like about small classes.”
Anny Moreira
Anny grew up in Brazil and learned and taught English before becoming a transfer student at Berkeley. Despite imposter syndrome early, she completed SCET’s Product Management course as an exceptional student in spring 2023, was a product manager intern at SolaceVR, and co-presented at the Collider Cup with her team, Smart Speech, aimed to help people with autism. She recently posted one of her best days, presenting at her graduation with a degree in cognitive science this spring.
How did you get involved with SCET?
“I am from Brazil and I moved to the U.S. four years ago. I went to community college, and when I got to Berkeley I was very overwhelmed with all the options so I decided to create my own path. I was a Cognitive Science student and wanted to study the intersection of that and entrepreneurship, but I didn’t plan on getting the [SCET] certificate until after I took the Product Management class.”
What was your experience like in the Product Management course?
“I read about product management as a career and thought it sounded fun. I was scared, but that class was the best class I have ever taken. It felt like such a good mix of hands-on experience and theory. I joined a group that created a text-to-speech app, SmartSpeech with AI for children with autism, and we ended up winning the class competition and going to the Collider Cup. We’re now trying to see where this project goes.”
How did the Product Management course impact the trajectory of SmartSpeech’s project?
“I really liked that I was challenged by understanding user needs. In this case, our users were non-verbal, so we had to figure out ways to understand their needs without directly asking them. We learned from the class that we’d have to take our time on this and really understand product requirements. We learned to do a lot of networking, and even met up with some parents at a Stanford autism conference, which is how we introduced our product.”
How does your background as a transfer student interact with your educational path?
“With SCET, I felt like I could do anything. They make you feel like you can be a CEO, you can be a startup founder, you can be a product manager, you can be an engineer, or you can go into finance and venture capital… I felt like a world of opportunities was being opened to me. I felt hopeful about the future and excited to create my own career path. SCET was supporting me, not just with the classes, but also the professors and the themes I could choose from. It made me feel empowered despite being a transfer student and not knowing much about foreign universities.”
What are your post-graduation plans?
“I’ve been looking into product management, but I’m also trying to be open-minded. I’m considering going into venture capital right now, starting up my financial career. My dream is to be able to combine venture capital with companies in Brazil and support them, because I think that this country is where companies can go forward.”
What advice do you have for students considering SCET?
“As a transfer, I feel like a lot of transfer students kind of accept their fate and do the bare minimum. SCET makes you feel like you can expand your horizons and follow any career you want – I would recommend SCET to any new student, even if they’re not necessarily interested in entrepreneurship.”
Kate Gerhardt
Kate was raised by a single mother, and seeks to advance multiple forms of diverse representation in her field. She completed SCET’s Product Management course as an exceptional student in fall 2022, and interned at Apple where she helped reduce PFAS in their products. After earning her degree in mechanical engineering this spring, she is transitioning to be a 5th Year Master’s student in 2024-25 for optimizing manufacturing and design with sustainability, and seeks to take more SCET courses.
What is your past experience like in product management?
“A little over 2 years ago I got a product management internship, and that was a great experience, but I felt like I was thrown in the deep end. I began looking for courses I could take, and did the Product Management course at Berkeley – which was fantastic, because of the hands-on experience and meeting with industry leaders – and a few courses at Stanford.
“In SCET’s Product Management course, I was inspired by my background in 3D modeling. Usually to do 3D modeling you have to download expensive software that is inaccessible for people that aren’t working at a company or school that pays for it. My group and I got to use those resources and create our own 3D modeling Figma that was online, affordable, and could be collaborated on.
“After completing those, I landed a program management internship at Apple, which I landed because of my prior education. Currently I am an engineering intern at a medical devices company, and looking forward I do want to go into product or program management, but before doing so I want to gain a little more technical experience. I’m taking another SCET class next semester, Deplastify the Planet, so I’m super excited about that.”
What appealed to you about SCET courses?
“It’s so hands-on. You can take a project from start to finish and then present it. When I took my product management courses at Stanford, it was very “textbook”, but you don’t get to create anything on your own. Actually getting to create a product, going through the whole product life cycle and interviewing people was super helpful to me. It’s one thing to just learn about something from a textbook but it’s another when you work with a team and gain feedback to create a viable product.
“Another main thing for me was working in a team environment. I found that a lot of my coursework was very individual, so working with a group of people from other majors or other disciplines was very nice. It’s easy to tunnel-vision on your ideas, but having to ideate with your teammates definitely contributes to a better, more successful project.
“Right now, even though I’m not currently in management, I make it a point to ask for feedback from different groups – the quality team, the users, the doctors that use our medical equipment – to make sure my own work is the best possible. I think these skills can be applied to basically anything else.”
How do you combine your interest in sustainability in the entrepreneurship world?
“When you manufacture something, there’s so much waste that goes into that product, and that can be cut down. In my internship with Apple, I was part of one of their environmental initiatives that took a chemical called PFAS out of all of their lines, and that opened my eyes to how these plastics affect our bodies. That inspired me to go on this sustainability mission, and it’s one of the big reasons why I’m getting my master’s degree as well. I want to learn about sustainable materials, how to design and manufacture while keeping sustainability in mind. It’s a very big part of engineering, but also a very big part of leadership. If leadership doesn’t push for sustainability, it’s something that can easily be put on the back burner.”