Career Development

Our Mission is to facilitate career and personal development of our alumni in the Silicon Valley and in China.

As our members tell us again and again, career and personal advancement is an important goal for this group of people and is one of the reasons to glue us together. We have come a long way to this foreign land to seek opportunities. Many of us overcame numerous hardship and language barrier Why did we do this? We all came with a strong goal to further develop our career and / or enhance our personal etiquette. Our committee will focus in the areas of leadership, communication skills, etiquette and entrepreneurship.

SJTU Alumni Association Career Club was founded at the end of 2002 by Edward Lee, who demonstrated great initiative and made significant contributions to the Club. Under Edward's leadership, Career Club has hosted a variety of free seminars and workshops on career development and entrepreneurship, all of which were very well received by our alumni.

In 2004, Career Club will continue to focus on the following topics:

• Career development: To help alumni who are job hunting, transitioning into a new industry, or seeking further opportunities with the same employer. At the heart of this topic is to provide opportunities for alumni to establish and maintain personal/professional connections to expand their professional horizons.
• Entrepreneurship: To help alumni find and implement business ideas, locate business partners, and establish connections for potential funding.
• Personal finance and investments: We believe that better personal finance may smooth our way through the tough job market. Future seminars will facilitate knowledge sharing, and they are great occasions for networking and establishing connections too.

The usual venue for Career Club will continue to be at the Merrill Lynch office in Downtown San Jose, thanks to Zheng Zhao's generosity and dedication.

If you have ideas, suggestions, comments, especially complaints on Career Club's events, please do not hesitate to email William Lu at any time.

Thanks for all your continued support, and the Career Club Team (Edward Lee, Zheng Zhao, William Lu) are looking forward to a great year of delivering more value to you!

William Lu
VP, Career Club, SJTU Alumni Association of Silicon Valley

Bio: William Lu is Development Manager of Vitech Systems Group, Inc., responsible for benefits/pension ERP requirements definition, design, analysis, and implementation strategies. He has been responsible for major financial entities such as CalPERS (California Public Employees' Retirement System), and UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers). Prior to that, William was a Technical Manager at Covansys, maintaining and supporting data warehouse systems at Gap Inc. Prior to that, William was a Project Manager at Shanghai Tandem Software Systems Co. Ltd., managing multiple porting and maintenance projects in the US.

A native of Mainland China, William received his MBA from Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, Bachelor of Computer Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.