Career Roadmap
Zach's work combines: Technology, Business, and Problem Solving
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Here's the path I took:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Chemical Engineering
University of California-Riverside
Here's the path I recommend for someone who wants to be a Sales Engineers:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Learn more about different paths to this career
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
I dropped out of high school and got my GED, then worked odd jobs, like teaching snowboarding.
2.
I decided to go back to school; I enrolled at Santa Barbara City College, then transferred to UCR.
3.
I developed an app with my professor, Dr. Wu, to calculate phase equilibrium of chemical mixtures.
4.
It ended up winning the 2013 Student AIChE/CACHE Mobile Device APP National Competition.
5.
After that, computer programming became a feasible option in my career search.
6.
I decided to apply to both programming and chemical engineering jobs; a programming job called back.
7.
What was great about that first job was that it let me explore languages other than Java.
8.
When ApplePay came out, I was able to mess around with EMV and familiarize myself with it.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Teachers:
You might as well just drop out of school.
How I responded:
I wasn't the best high school student...I think I was just bored because they weren't teaching me about the things that I was interested in. An advisor encouraged me to drop out of school and just get my GED so I did. After that, I worked odd jobs until one night, I was working as a janitor, mopping a floor, and I realized that wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So I went back to school and got an undergraduate degree; it was a big investment and a long road, but it paid off.