Name: Can Akdere
Bio: I’m Can Akdere, a freshman studying engineering and thinking about to study mechanical or financial engineering from Istanbul, Turkey. I dedicated my free time to do community involvement project which was “Yagmur Cocuklari” (foundation of children with Autism and Down syndrome) to arrange a theater play which they star in. As entrepreneurial Thursday manager in Entrepreneurs club, I’ve manage to make the Turkey’s first fair across high schools. As an E-board member of the Turkish Student Association here at Columbia, I was able to understand more with the issues facing international students on campus.
Platform: Alumni mentorship:
Every year Columbia has a large amount of students that are graduating and becoming valuable alumni. I don’t want them to get disconnected with school with all of the experience that they have which current students can greatly benefit from. This is to create an environment for new coming students to adjust Columbia as well as New York city and get their everyday questions about “what can I do in this place?” It will not only serve oncoming students but also serve a purpose to older students by teaching about the work places and what is it like to be in the market right now. We have enough alumni to match every single student to an alumni and when the current students who got alumni mentorship as a benefit, in the future they will, in turn, become a useful source to the current students
Open alumni directory:
As I mentioned before we have a great variety of alumni in Columbia’s data base. If this would be open to the current students to use it and navigate themselves in the chaos of New York City, this platform will give a great start point for life after college. I will try to open this alumni base to all of the current Columbia students. Open alumni network is always something that wanted by current student so I will put all of my effort to fuse alumni and current students.
Connecting with LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is a very useful tool for professional career development nowadays. I will talk with Microsoft to connect our alumni database with LinkedIn which will give our current Columbia students a great leverage when searching for jobs and creating their own professional path towards graduation. I will work to synchronize these two platforms to give the benefits of both of them in just one single site.
Entrepreneurship:
I want to increase the channels which entrepreneurs use in Columbia. There are not many now and I will work to create one with Columbia. This portal will enable Columbia’s entrepreneurs to communicate with capital contacts and be consulted on their start up, start to finish. And then I will make a site about these entrepreneurial adventure’s to guide incoming young spirits who are thinking about to pursue similar type of career.
Name: Mohnish Chakravarti 
Bio: Mohnish Chakravarti is a freshman from Mumbai, India planning on majoring in Applied Math or Operations Research. He was involved in student council for all four years of high school, and is really excited to be running for student council again. On campus, Mohnish is part of the Columbia University Rugby Football Club, CORE, Club Zamana and Symposium in India. When he’s not busy buried in problem sets or running his own startup, he can be found listening to music, trying out food around the city and playing soccer.
Platform: As your ESC Professional Development and Alumni Affairs representative, I will strive to develop programs and policies that will help you prepare yourself professionally in the best way possible. While some of my plans may seem ambitious, having already served on the Executive Board for multiple clubs, I can assure you that I know what it is like to take responsibility and I will work hard to successfully implement them from my very first day as your Professional Development and Alumni Affairs representative.
Some of the projects that I hope to undertake:
– A one-to-one peer mentoring program connecting underclassmen to upperclassmen: I hope to develop a network that will connect underclassmen to upperclassmen who will be taking up graduate studies or jobs in the fields of their interest, thereby giving them a mentor who can guide them and help them achieve their professional goals
– Increased visibility for non-computer science and non-finance jobs, companies in CCE showcases and career fairs: Opportunities in Computer Science have largely shadowed those in other fields. ESC’s 2016 report stated that only 2.1% of the employers at career fairs were in the BME field (13.1% of the graduating class majored in BME). Situations were similar for mechanical engineering (4% of the employers at the career fair were in mechanical engineering, whereas 15.2% of the graduating class majored in it), chemical engineering and other majors (source: Columbia Daily Spectator). Working together with pre-professional clubs and CCE, I hope to increase presence of non-computer science/finance professions on campus.
– A CCASSIP (Columbia College Alumni Sponsored Student Internship Program)-like program for SEAS undergraduates: Getting internships as a freshman or a sophomore is tough. Working together with the rest of the ESC, CCE and alumni affairs office, I hope to begin developing a program like CCASSIP which will make the search for an internship easier, as well as offer an opportunity to network with alumni for a SEAS student
Having also networked, interviewed and successfully received offers to intern in fields that have been described tough to break into as a freshman, I will organize workshops and events throughout the year that will help freshman, sophomores and juniors in their search for internships and full-time employment opportunities.