Outstanding Graduating Senior: Leadership in action

When Branden Lau arrived on campus as a first-year student, he knew he would major in business, but beyond that the details were still sketchy. But Lau found his focus, and after carrying the CIS banner at graduation in his role as the Information Systems Outstanding Graduating Senior, Lau will start his career in the Salt Lake City office of Goldman Sachs, where he’ll be working as an operations analyst.

When Branden Lau arrived on campus as a first-year student, he knew he would major in business, but beyond that the details were still sketchy. But Lau found his focus, and after carrying the CIS banner at graduation in his role as the Information Systems Outstanding Graduating Senior, Lau will start his career in the Salt Lake City office of Goldman Sachs, where he’ll be working as an operations analyst. “I have watched Branden for the past several years as a budding scholar — he always stands out — sometimes for being the quiet, contemplating one who always says the most responsible, congenial and forward thinking things at the exact right time,” said Michael Goul, chairman of the department.

“I watched him share leadership, and observed that he understands how to make genuine friends. I always enjoyed talking with him and seeing his intellect in action.” Branden says his biggest challenge during his college career was the first-year student year. The transition from Flagstaff High School to the big, complex ASU campus was disorienting, especially since few of his friends made the move to Tempe with him. But when sophomore year rolled around he was ready: “There were so many things in the world I wanted to do! In that first semester I decided my goal was to get an A-plus if an A-plus was available in that class. Second semester I started to get involved.”

Getting involved meant joining DISC (the Department of Information Systems Club). “It’s hard to pinpoint just one thing that’s the value-add students gain from DISC,” he said. First, it’s the people – bright students who become friends and study partners, who help you identify your career goals. Second, it’s the exposure to companies by way of the representatives who make presentations at DISC’s weekly meetings about their firms and the opportunities available to CIS students.

Eventually, Lau served two terms as DISC vice president of finance. “My involvement with DISC encouraged me to become more involved on campus, and to give back to the community,” he said. He signed on as a consultant with the W. P. Carey School’s New Venture Group, which helps local businesses work through pressing issues. He was also president of Delta Sigma Pi, where he helped organize a hotdog eating contest that raised $3,000 for the American Cancer Society. Lau’s résumé includes three coveted internships, and two of them — at Meritage Homes’ Protiviti — can be traced back to contacts he made at DISC meetings.

His third was at Goldman Sachs, his future employer, where he led a team of 10 interns on a division-wide initiative under a tight deadline. “Internships are incredibly valuable — it’s one of the best things students can do to set themselves up for success,” he said. The internship is a chance to apply what you’ve learned in class, he said. For example, at his Meritage Homes internship, he was asked to set up a system using Salesforce.com — which he had never used before.

“It was a little bit of programming mixed with project management,” he said. “I had just taken a C+ class, and I was able to apply many of the things I had learned in my CIS classes: logically how things should flow, how to really take the initiative with a project and have that self-drive to figure out how to get it done — how to map it out, how to work with a team, how to communicate between the business and the technical people.” “Honestly it was probably one of the most valuable experiences I’ve had in college, because it was the first time I had worked in the corporate world,” he said. “It wasn’t an internship where they say go get some coffee or run these reports. You could see the impact — it was really quite amazing.”

Lau also had a chance to explore the history of the immigrant experience in America. In 2011 he was one of the recipients of the Y. F. Wu research scholarship. For his project he made a documentary video about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and compared it to Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070. Branden said the making of the video taught him more than just history. The research involved networking in the Asian-American community to find knowledgeable sources willing to be interviewed on camera. “It changed me,” he said. “I learned about persistence."

To high school seniors looking forward to first-year student year, Lau has this bit of advice: get involved. There are a lot of student groups on-campus, he explained, so find something you like and join the right ones. Another tip: Get to know your professors. Then, when you have a path mapped out, “pay it forward,” Branden says, and help someone else. That’s what he did.