Graduate Distinguished Achievement Awardees 2022

Distinguished Achievement Graduate Honorees for 2022

The Lam Family College of Business Congratulates the Graduate Honorees for 2022!

These seven students receive a Graduate Student Award for Distinguished Achievement from the University during Commencement week. In addition, one student is selected as the college’s Graduate Hood Recipient.

Bixia Ye

Bixia Ye, Master of Business Administration – Graduate Hood Recipient

Bixia completed the Master of Business Administration program in Fall 2021. She initially came to the United States twelve years ago and since that time has achieved a high level of academic, professional, and personal success. 

After earning a bachelor’s degree in Economics from UC Berkeley in 2015, Bixia began working for the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), a government agency that regulates investor-owned utilities, as an Auditor with the Utility Audit, Finance and Compliance Branch.  She moved up the ranks with CPUC quickly.  Bixia obtained her Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license in 2017 and in Spring, 2020, joined the MBA program to improve her analytical, leadership, communications and decision-making skills.  Bixia currently works with CPUC as a Regulatory Analyst.  Her position’s main responsibility is to understand trends and issues pertaining to public utility regulations, principles of program evaluation and planning, and conduct research and analysis on the concepts of economics, econometrics, and finance to develop appropriate recommendations on public regulatory issues.    

In addition to working full-time throughout her studies at San Francisco State, Bixia is also the proud mother of two young children.  She often found herself completing course assignments late nights after her kids went to sleep or early in the morning prior to starting work.  Despite having limited time, one of Bixia’s instructors described her class efforts as “outstanding”.  She was consistently an active participant in class and was highly collaborative when presenting case studies with her teammates.  

Joshua Gomez

Joshua Gomez, Master of Science in Accountancy

Joshua is completing the Master of Science in Accountancy program in Spring 2022.  His group’s final project is a paper that analyzes the recent change that eliminated the amortization of goodwill for public companies.  Joshua previously earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration (concentration in Accounting) from the LFCoB in Spring 2021.  During his studies at SF State, he was a member of Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) and was the BAP Director of Outreach in Spring 2021.  In addition to voluntarily tutoring undergraduate accounting students, Joshua was a student facilitator for a Supplemental Instruction Course of DS 412: Operations Management, and in the Fall 2021 semester, he performed a project management simulation analysis for the Decision Sciences Department in conjunction with Professor Susan Cholette. 

Joshua is a veteran, first-generation college student, and proud parent of two boys.  He served as a construction mechanic for five years during his service in the Navy.  Upon completion of his program, Joshua will be working as an Audit Associate for Grant Thornton.  After working in public accounting, his goal one day is to become a college professor so he may give back to students the way his professors did for him.   

Leia Balliett

Leia Balliett, Master of Business Administration

Leia earned her Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree and a graduate certificate in International Business and Global Leadership following completion of the Fall 2021 semester. Leia’s culminating project focused on addressing present issues and future opportunities for values-driven organizations.  Along with two peers in the MBA program, Leia conducted an in-depth analysis of Amy’s Kitchen – a Certified B Corp, leader in the food industry, and Bay Area native.  A few other projects that she worked on during her MBA studies, included designing and digitally prototyping a kiosk system to optimize the bulk food shopping process and reduce reliance on single-use plastics and researching Facebook’s impacts on innovation and global markets – presenting both ethics-focused and optimization-focused paths forward for business users.     

Leia earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (Marketing) from SF State.  It’s no surprise to her family that Leia went on to study Marketing and pursue an MBA – as a child, she was always intrigued by advertisements, billboards, and media.  During her MBA studies, Leia worked for the LFCoB Marketing group; she participated in the planning committee for the Women’s Emerging Leadership Forum (WELF); she twice participated on the Continuing Student and Alumni Panel during the New Graduate Business Programs Orientation; and she served as a member of the College’s Brand Task Force, where she completed a competitive analysis of graduate business education in the Bay Area and presented strategic marketing initiatives to enhance the LFCoB brand.   

Shan Ci (Tracy) Ng

Shan Ci (Tracy) Ng, Master of Science in Business Analytics 

Tracy is completing the Master of Science in Business Analytics program in Spring 2022.  The goal of Tracy’s final project, entitled “Optimizing the Routes of Cargo Across the Globe” is to create routing algorithms for a container shipping company with three metrics in mind: the fastest, least expensive, and lowest CO2 emissions route.  Currently, the company is only able to provide routes based on a time metric (fastest route) and they are seeing an increasing number of clients looking to be more sustainable.  Tracy’s project will allow the company to provide routes to its clients based on time, cost and sustainability concerns.  

Tracy is a volunteer at the Tzu Chi Foundation, a humanitarian-aid organization.  She volunteers weekly at the Bayview-Hunters Point Community site to assist with food distribution.  During the holiday season, she coordinates with non-profit organizations and shelters to distribute essential needs for the homeless.  She also assists the organization’s scholarship program by reaching out to schools, filtering applications, and interviewing applicants.  

Tracy grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Statistics from the University of Iowa.  Her interest in data analytics can be traced back to middle school when she used to help her dad record tide times at various ports in Malaysia through an annual booklet published by the National Hydrographic Centre.  She recalls this being the time she learned about her family business and the critical nature of data collection in ensuring that tugboats could safely arrive in port and deliver goods at a specified time. 

Henry (Eric) Low

Henry (Eric) Low, Master of Science in Business Analytics

Eric is completing a Master of Science degree in Business Analytics (MSBA) in Spring 2022. For his culminating experience project, he is working with a technology startup company MOPO to implement a graph database along with graph algorithms to create an improved recommendation system. MOPO specializes in matching users with recreational experiences they’ll enjoy both locally and in new destinations. The major benefits of graph databases are fast, consistent, and scalable representations of complicated relationships through nodes, edges and queries

Prior to joining the MSBA program in Fall 2020, Eric was employed in the foodservice industry with Columbus Craft Meats, where he worked as a Fermentation Manager and managed 16 direct reports.  Columbus produces salami and other high-quality deli meats – Eric’s primary task was to ensure the salami went through all the correct fermentation steps, met the company’s high standard of quality, and was safe for its customers to eat.  The decision to switch career paths at the age of 30 was not an easy one to make, but two years later, he is very happy with his decision.   

Akanksha Paliwal

Akanksha Paliwal, Master of Science in Business Analytics

Akanksha completed the Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program in Fall 2021. Her final project identified and implemented a new filtering-based recommendation algorithm, which combined matrix factorization and monotonic user behavior chains, that was used to generate recommendations for MOPO App users and introduce them to activities through their application.  This model suited MOPO life since it incorporated a user journey in its recommendations. 

Akanksha's campus involvement included working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant with Professor Pooyan Fazil for the Computer Science graduate course on Artificial Intelligence (CSC 865).  In addition, Akanksha spent her summers in the MSBA program working in the People and Robotics Lab as a Machine Learning Research Assistant.  Akanksha was also a member of the LFCoB Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fellows Program.

Akanksha is currently working as a Senior Product Analyst with Chegg University, an educational technology company that is connecting students with resources created by academics from accredited schools as well as other educational student support services.  She enjoys learning about new technologies and sharing what she has learned through her Blog on medium.com.  

Jeffrey Kenney

Jeffrey Kenney, Master of Science in Quantitative Economics

Originally from Bakersfield, CA, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Economics with a minor in Philosophy, Jeffrey is earning his Master of Science degree in Quantitative Economics (MSQE) in Spring 2022.  Jeffrey has been involved in many research projects as a student: Reviewing factors impacting the success of SF State students in introductory economics courses by examining course delivery methods and course structure; examining housing situations of SF State faculty and staff; and assessing the relationship between recession and suicide rates in Canada.  The recipient of the 2021 Don W. Scoble Scholarship, Jeffrey has assisted the Economics faculty as a grader and/or graduate assistant through his studies in the MSQE program.  In addition to his work with the Economics Department, Jeffrey has worked as an economics tutor with the Tutoring and Academic Support Center (TASC) at SF State.

Jeffrey is currently employed full-time as a Financial Analyst with Trinitas Farming, an LLC that provides farm management and various agricultural business services to its clients.  His position with Trinitas involves developing and maintaining financial models, financial reporting, budgeting and forecasting.