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Fifth Annual International Career Symposium

Filed under: Interns, Events, Spring, May, Speaker, UNA Events — Administrator

Schedule for the Career Symposium, Saturday, May 3rd 2008

8:30AM-9:00AM: Registration and Breakfast

9:00AM-9:15AM: Welcome Words

9:15AM-10:15AM: Interactive Resume Critique

10:20AM-11:20AM: Session 1:
Non-Profit Organization- Sharon Darrough, International Rescue Committee
or
Private Enterprise Jeffrey Peterson, Science Application International Corporation (SAIC)

11:25AM-12:25PM: Session 2:
International Law & Development Edward Spriggs
or
Communications and Marketing Brian van de Mark

12:30PM-1:30PM: Lunch and Graduate School Panel

1:30PM-2:30PM: Session 3:
International Relations Professor Ronald Bee
or
International Education Adam Sawyer

**10:20AM-2:30PM: Open Session for International Career and Internship Fair**

2:30PM-3:15PM: Keynote Speaker: Swanie Schmidt

3:15PM-3:45PM: Performances and Giveaways

$10 registration fee: Includes one year UNA membership, and breakfast & lunch. Open to all college students.Register Here.

Speaker Biographies:

Sharon Darrough

Since 1996, Sharon Darrough has worked to serve newly arrived refugees at the International Rescue Committee San Diego. Sharon’s first job at IRC was to educate refugees about the American workplace and help them find their first job in the US. She currently oversees the Resource Development Department, coordinating volunteers, donations, grant writing, and public relations.

Prior to working at IRC, Sharon was an Assistant Resident Dean at Revelle College, UCSD. Sharon graduated from UCSD, Revelle College, with a degree in Political Science. She then served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand and has a Masters degree in International and Intercultural Management from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Brian van de Mark

Brian van de Mark has worked in International Marketing and Communications for over 15 years, having lived in Japan, England, Germany, and France, before settling in San Diego. Mr. van de Mark has traveled to over 130 countries, and all seven continents, including a scientific expedition to Antarctica. Mr. van de Mark worked for Schering-Plough, KK in Osaka, Japan launching Claritin, after attending graduate school in Tokyo. He then returned to the United States and worked for Maxwell Technologies as the Director/Chief Marketing Officer of Marketing and Communications. During his tenure, his job was to consolidate 16 subsidiaries’ (industrial computers, water purification, space satellite hardware, electric vehicle components, etc.) marketing and communications departments and service them as an in-house agency.

In 2000, Mr. van de Mark and some colleagues began a guerilla marketing firm, BGR Communications. Clients include a wide range of industries, including entertainment, sportswear, computer data protection, etc. Along with his Masters in Japanese, Mr. van de Mark also holds a Masters in International Business from the nationally-ranked Darla School of Business at the University of South Carolina. He currently teaches undergraduate and MBA level courses Southern State University and The Art Institute of California-San Diego. In 2005, Mr. van de Mark was honored by the San Diego Union-Tribune as the San Diego County Teacher of the Year.

Ronald J. Bee

Since 2005, Ronald J. Bee has served as the Director of Charles Hostler Institute on World Affairs at San Diego State University (SDSU). He has also taught upper division courses on national security, homeland security, global systems and the conduct of American foreign relations since 2003. In 2006-2007, he was appointed as the managing director for the Hansen Summer Institute on Leadership and International Cooperation, a program based at SDSU and funded by the Fred J. Hansen Foundation.

From 2003-2006, Bee co-chaired the military-to-military series, Arms Control and Regional Security Improvement in the Middle East at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). IGCC, a statewide research center, with support from the U.S. Congress, conducts research and quiet meetings between diplomats, military officers, and experts on regional security cooperation. Bee has also taught courses in national security policy and WMD proliferation at the USDA Graduate School in Washington, D.C., and at the University of San Diego. He comments for most San Diego television and radio stations. Bee’s field of interests include: U.S.-Middle East Relations, American national security policy, U.S. foreign policy, WMD proliferation, U.S.-European Relations, and U.S.-German relations.

Prior to moving to San Diego in 1994, Bee worked for 15 years in Washington, D.C., with occasional stints overseas. He served as a consultant to the U.S. Freedom Support Act Exchange Program (Moscow) and the Foreign Policy Association (FPA). A frequent contributor to the FPA Great Decisions Program, his latest publication appeared in January 2007: “Climate Change and Global Warming.” In spring 2006, FPA published Bee’s latest book, Seven Minutes to Midnight: Nuclear Weapons after 9/11. Bee is currently working with Loretta Napoleoni, a London-based expert, on writing a book entitled, Terrorism by the Numbers: Separating Fact from Fiction, due to be published in spring 2008.

He served as a foreign policy analyst at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA, Vienna, Austria, 1981), as a foreign affairs analyst at the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division (1982), a special assistant for national security affairs at Palomar Corporation (1982-87), as a Robert Bosch Fellow in the German Bundestag (Committee on Foreign Affairs) and with the Governing Mayor of Berlin (1987-88), and as director of research and publications at ACCESS: A Security Information Service (1990-92). At ACCESS he co-authored One Nation Becomes Many: The ACCESS Guide to the Former Soviet Union, and A Guide to the 1991 Gulf War.

Bee testified before the Presidential Commission on Chemical Warfare Review (1985), and conducted analyses of post World War II nuclear crises, examining high-level documents. He is the author of Nuclear Proliferation: The Post-Cold War Challenge (FPA Headline Series No. 303, 1995). Bee has co-authored the book, Looking the Tiger in the Eye: Confronting the Nuclear Threat (Harper & Row, 1988), recipient of the 1998 Christopher Award, Washington Post bestseller, and NY Times Notable Book of the Year. He also published in a December 2004 Robert Bosch Foundation volume, Building a New Transatlantic Generation, “Toward a Post 9/11 Transatlantic Vision for the Middle East: Restoring Hope and Collective Security.”

Bee has a degree in history from UC San Diego, and has studied international relations and security studies at the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Oxford University, and the University of Grenoble. He is a member of the American Council on Germany, the Arms Control Association, and the Academy of Political Science.

Adam Sawyer

Adam Sawyer joins I House this year as a Visiting Scholar from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. A doctoral candidate in International Education, Adam’s work focuses on policy issues within the Mexican education system and the education of Mexican immigrants and other Latino/a students in the United States. Previous to his graduate studies, Adam worked as a Spanish bilingual elementary school teacher in East Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, California, and as an Academic Consultant to the Mexican Ministry of Education. He received his BA in 1995 from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Adam is a visiting scholar this year at UCSD’s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS). At CCIS, he will be working under the tutelage of Professor Wayne Cornelius and Professor David Fitzgerald on the Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program. He will help to develop and carry out a sub-project that compares schooling within the prominent emigrant community of San Miguel Tlatotepec in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, with the local communities of Vista and San Marcos, California to which a great number of immigrants from San Miguel Tlatotepec migrate. Adam looks forward this year to developing friendships and learning more about the numerous corners of the world from which I House residents come, and engaging in an ongoing dialogue with the community on the relationship between global migration education, and international development.

Swanie Schmidt

Swanie Schmidt joined IR/PS in September 2002 following six years abroad and a successful international career working for European and Asian universities, a U.S. nonprofit career center, and a global outplacement firm. As a career management professional, she has designed and launched a wide variety of global career management projects. Working closely with alumni, faculty, and students, she is consistently recognized for her innovative and entrepreneurial style of career management. At IR/PS, she views the students as “citizens of the world” and finds their diversity and complexity most intriguing. Swanie enjoys balancing her efforts in individual consulting with facilitating workshops to help graduate students and alumni achieve their short and long term goals.

Edward Spriggs
Associate Vice Chancellor-Resource Administration, Student Affairs UC San Diego: Edward Spriggs graduated from Revelle College, UCSD in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics. After working two years with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he continued his education, graduating with a JD from the New York University School of Law and in 1975. That year he joined a well known private law firm in Washington D.C. where he practiced corporate and international law. He was recruited by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1979 and spent the next 22 years serving abroad and in the U.S. in various positions, including Regional Legal Advisor, Assistant General Counsel, Country Director in Namibia, and Regional Director for Southern Africa. Mr. Spriggs assumed his current position at UCSD in July 2001.

Jeff Peterson

For the past three years, Mr. Peterson has been an Enterprise Architect and Systems Engineer for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) located in San Diego, California. In his role within the company he provides guidance, support and coordination for major corporate Information Technology (IT) and Business Process initiatives which help align IT with overall corporate goals to keep the company competitive in the ever expanding global marketplace. In this role he has also led several SAIC acquisitions and divestitures both within the US and internationally. Before coming to SAIC he founded Enterprise Technologies, Inc., an IT and project management consulting firm which provided strategic support to companies such as Southern California Edison and Bank of the West.

Prior to his relocation to the San Diego area, Mr. Peterson spent time in the US Military, earned a degree in business and became a Project Management Professional spending most of his sixteen year career in IT within the Los Angeles area. During this time he focused on managing multi-million dollar IT outsourcing contracts for Union Bank of California, Honda and the Los Angeles Times. In addition to his work within corporate IT organizations, Mr. Peterson has also volunteered extensively on Sheriff’s Search and Rescue teams, earning both an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) qualification as well as a Level II reserve sheriff qualification. He is currently married and enjoys volunteering time for various organizations in and around San Diego.