success stories

Our graduates are making a mark wherever they go. Here are the stories of just a few alumni who recently graduated from four-year colleges and are now thriving in professional careers.

Nohely Peraza

As a student at Eastside, Nohely was voted “Most likely to become an ECP faculty member.” Her classmates knew her very well — Nohely recently became the first Eastside alum to join our faculty. Nohely has a B.A. from Williams College, where she majored in American Studies and English, with concentrations in Africana Studies and Latina/o Studies. She also spent a year abroad at the University of Oxford. During her time in college, Nohely taught summer classes for low-income youth through Breakthrough Collaborative and Catholic Charities at St. Francis of Assisi. Nohely is teaching 9th grade world literature and a section of Senior Research Institute at Eastside.

Juan Lopez-Nava

Juan studied business administration at CSU East Bay. The summer after his freshman year, he interned at DLA Piper, with a focus on data quality and analytics. The following summer, he did an internship at Moody’s Analytics, where he was so successful that he was invited to remain on part-time while he finished his degree. After graduating, he accepted a full-time position as a marketing associate at Moody’s.

Alejandra Lopez

Alejandra graduated from Eastside with a dream of giving back to her community through the field of medicine. Unsure of her career options, she originally thought she would become a doctor because of her interest in science and studied molecular cell and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz. She worked with her career coach to apply for and receive a summer internship at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital but soon found that the field of medicine wasn’t quite the right fit. With the guidance and support of her coach, Alejandra reimagined her possibilities and secured two consecutive summer internships at Arcus Biosciences. She is now a senior research associate at Arcus, working on a team that researches new cancer treatments, and she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in immunology.

Brian Alas

Brian used Eastside’s internship program to help him pinpoint his interests in finance. When he first met with his career coach, he mentioned that he was interested in “business” but didn’t know what career paths could be open to him. With his coach’s support, he completed a research internship with Manresa Capital and later a financial internship with Traulia Inc. Through those experiences, Brian pinpointed his interest in finance, eventually securing a full-time position as a business banking analyst at First Republic Bank after interning there. Brian graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

Jenny Guillen

Jenny Guillen graduated from Sonoma State University where she studied accounting and business management. She built strong interviewing and networking skills with the help of her career coach and explored her interests through on-campus career-oriented clubs. Jenny was a program assistant intern and later an accounting intern. She became the HR Operations Intern at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital where she was applauded for her attention to detail and proactive work ethic. Following graduation, she was hired as an HR assistant at the hospital.

Miguel Berumen

Miguel Berumen earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science at UC Santa Cruz. An IT internship at Cisco resulted in a job as lead technician for ResNet, UCSC’s information technology service. In July of 2018 he joined Google as a network operations engineer, participating in a program that will allow him to rotate through several departments before he is assigned to a permanent position.