Girl Up, a club on campus, emphasizes the importance of female representation in everyday life and empowers high school girls to pursue their dreams. Giving girls the opportunity to broaden their connections to the real world, Girl Up will be hosting a career panel on Feb. 17 with former Arcadia High School (AHS) alumni who have gone through the hardships of getting a job as a female.  

One of the alumni who will be attending the event is Nicole Calayco, who attended Arcadia schools and graduated in the class of 2006. Since then, Calayco attended UC Berkeley where she got her degree in business and finance. While she was attending Berkeley, she also worked at many paid internships. For those who are interested in majoring in a field like Calayco, this event would be perfect to attend and a great way to get first hand advice and ask questions. Inspirational and motivational speakers will be able to share their stories through the business and finance world and help AHS girls develop connections that can help them through their adult journey. 

As of now, Calayco is the head of ADS Business Development at Reddit. Her journey as an undergraduate includes many paid internships involving advertising. She emphasizes how at this time, the only ways that companies sourced revenues online were through advertising, subscriptions, and e-tail. In this experience she learned a lot about the realm of advertising, how campaigns are sold, the competition between media businesses, and how ads are measured. With all her knowledge behind online advertising and business, this information is valuable, especially coming from someone who shares similar experiences with usas AHS students.

“The purpose of the career panel is to inspire AHS students on our campus to envision their futures!” said co-president senior Leilani Wetterau. 

Another AHS alum who will also be at the career panel is Annie Chen Treadway who also graduated from AHS in 2006. Treadway graduated from UC Davis, with her bachelor’s in Nutrition and Psychology. With her interests being a part of preventative care and nutrition services, Treadway started to work at a healthcare administration after noticing the lack of funding in said service. Now, she is a senior manager for patient access at Optum California, which is a leading medical group in Southern California. 

Another panelist who will be attending is Alice Chuang who graduated from AHS in 1995. After high school, Chuang furthered her education at UC Berkeley, where she graduated with a double major in Molecular Cell Biology and English Literature. She also received her J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law and was the Editor in Chief of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. Her experiences through the wide range of majors and jobs go from practicing her law career at IP litigation in BigLaw, then transitioning to a boutique IP Firm. As of now, she works in house at Western Digital and X, Google’s moonshot factory, and then has returned to private practice at Marton Ribera Schumajnn & Chang LLP.  

With the efforts of the girls at Girl Up, bringing the AHS female Alumni to a career panel is amazing and will benefit many girls with their endeavors in pursuing their majors in universities and beyond that. 

Graphic courtesy of Arcadia Girl Up Club