Graduate Stories

When March Madness arrives, some aspects of college sports feel the same as ever. Teams still fight their way through conference tournament gauntlets. Fans of “bubble” teams — Broncos included — cheer when their team makes it to the big dance.

On the wall of a warehouse on Santa Clara University property, Liz Pham proudly displays her latest accolade: a forklift certificate. The written exam was easy, but the driving test required three attempts.

By the time the Super Bowl lands in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on February 8, months of game planning will come down to one day of action.

By the time Leavey alum Joy Ofodu founded Enjoyment Endeavor in 2021, she already understood something many creatives spend years learning: creativity becomes sustainable only when it’s paired with strategy.

A Louis Vuitton boutique in Bermuda is about as far from a research lab as you can get. Yet that’s exactly where Oksana Komarova stood, running a luxury storefront and selling $3,000 handbags to tourists.

Artist and athlete Lauren Grover ’25, M.S. ’27 is pursuing a graduate degree in sports business while playing one last season with the Broncos.

During a Career Center-hosted trip to Levi’s Stadium, students gained professional development, employer connections, and a competitive edge in a rapidly shifting hiring landscape.

From managing food service operations to overseeing global facilities for Fortune 500 companies, alum Anne Moser has navigated every major career pivot with grit, clarity, and a knack for turning challenge into opportunity.

From Coast Guard aviation to NSA intelligence to Marine Corps counterintelligence, Sam Hickey, Josh Michael, and Cody Boleyn brought decades of service - and very different paths - to the same Executive MBA cohort at Leavey.

When it comes to measuring financial sentiment, large-language models (LLMs) outperform traditional tools used by data scientists, with a caveat: They still require careful and deliberate guidance from people to work properly.