The journey after Aragon: successful alumni

Linda Bilmes, class of 1976, Harvard professor and economist

Linda Bilmes has had an interest in public policy for as long as she could remember. During high school, Bilmes was the student body president and involved herself in the California Junior State and Amigos de las Americas programs.

After high school, she obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University and its business school. She also earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford.

Currently, Bilmes teaches public policy and public finance at Harvard. From 1998 to 2001, Bilmes served as Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“I was very fortunate to have the position, but it was a very steep learning curve,” Bilmes said. “I went from managing seven people to 850,000 people. Learning how to steer a big ship and how to motivate and connect with a large number of people … was a big challenge for me.”

In this position, she was in charge of the budget of the Department of Commerce. A lot of Bilmes’s work revolved around ensuring that Congress sufficiently funded various organizations.

“One of our big accomplishments was that [it was] the only time during the last 60 years that we actually achieved a balanced budget and paid off some of the national debt,” Bilmes said.

Bilmes has also authored many books and papers. Among these are “The Three Trillion Dollar War” and “The People Factor.”

“‘The People Factor,’ is about managing the public workforce,” Bilmes said. “The government workforce works every day … [but] they don’t have a lot of the perks and benefits of some in the private sector. So ensuring that we hired high-quality people, gave them training, motivated and retained talent, all of those issues were also things I spent a lot of my time working on.”

Bilmes has a final message to the students of Aragon.

“Life is long, and there are many different ways to achieve your goals,” Bilmes said. “There’s no one single way. And so it’s important to try your best to make a difference … It’s not always that easy to figure it out, so allow yourself to experiment. It doesn’t matter if not everything works out the way you want it to, or the way you think it should, because sometimes that’s just helping lead you to the right thing. And for things that you really want, you have to be willing to keep at it.”

AJ Cole, class of 2002, compensation operations consultant

AJ Cole attended Auburn University and got a bachelor’s degree in business logistics. Then, he earned his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix.

Originally, Cole was going to pursue a management career in a distribution center. However, right after graduating from college and obtaining a motorcycle, Cole moved back to the Bay Area and faced serious injuries due to a car accident forcing him to switch career plans.

“I [couldn’t] really work in a distribution center and dodge forklifts anymore,” Cole said. “It’s just sort of a random niche field that. I was paying attention to some job postings and saw.”

Cole was first introduced to the world of business at Aragon. He joined the Future Business Leaders of America Club and learned about fundraising.

Cole’s job as a compensation operations consultant requires a lot of research and foresight. He has to set the pay rates for different jobs in organizations and plan out raises and equity. Cole’s team spends each day looking at and sorting through confidential information.

“[It] can be a little bit isolating in that regard,” Cole said. “It’s highly precision and accuracy-oriented. People know their own pay, so you can’t make a mistake there. There’s a lot of checking your work.”
Cole is currently working as the principal Pacific Compensation Advisors, LLC.

Sam Alavi-Irvine, class of 2013, activist and higher education administrator

From an early age, Sam Alavi-Irvine has been an activist, striving to make the world a better place.

“If you see a problem in the world, do something about it,” Alavi-Irvine said. “One thing that I think is really important is young people being able to see injustices and then feeling like they have the tools to do something about it, whether it is advocating for change on a small level or a big level.”

During her time at Aragon, Alavi-Irvine became the president of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance Club, a writer and photographer for The Outlook, a theater crew member and a photographer for Yearbook.

Additionally, Alavi-Irvine and a few other students founded a nonprofit organization called Bay Area Youth Summit, focusing on teaching others how to advocate for themselves, particularly surrounding LGBTQ+ issues. They even brought some famous activists, leaders and actors to campus.

Through BAYS’s success, Alavi-Irvine got the opportunity to work with the White House on issues surrounding safety for LGBTQ+ students.

“Since then, I’ve got to work with a lot of politicians on every level, passing laws and policies that help make our schools more inclusive and safe,” Alavi-Irvine said. “That started at Aragon but has continued even to my job today. I [teach] future healthcare workers how to work with diverse students … like LGBTQ+ populations [and] populations of color.”

After high school, Alavi-Irvine earned her undergraduate degree in sociology and education at the University of California, Davis. She continued on to get her master’s degree in education and policy at Stanford University.
Alavi-Irvine is currently the director of the Center for Community Engagement at Samuel Merritt University, promoting community engagement and health equity. She helps write grants and oversees health equality projects, the maternal health equity initiative, the human trafficking initiative, and the heart health initiative. She also plans to pursue a doctorate program in education.

Gary Tobin, class of 1963, journalist and marketing consultant

Gary Tobin is a 1963 graduate and former sports writer for The Outlook, known at the time as The Aragon Aristocrat. After graduating from Aragon’s first graduating class, Tobin majored in history and minored in journalism at San Francisco State University.

During college, Tobin worked at the San Francisco Chronicle initially as a copyboy and later a sports writer — the youngest for a long time. Tobin was first introduced to journalism in his freshman year at San Mateo High School before transferring to Aragon when it opened in 1961.

“When I was a freshman at San Mateo, we took a course called Freshman Guidance,” Tobin said. “In the course, we had to pick an occupation that we wanted to become ultimately. I picked journalism and public relations … I had no idea when I was 14 years old that if I said I was going to do something, … 64 years later … I [would] still do it.”

Now, Tobin runs his own consulting business, TOBIN & Associates. Through his work and life experience, he has garnered a wealth of experience and wisdom, shaping his core beliefs.

“You can’t do something you say no to,” Tobin said. “[I’ve] made a career [of], when a client or potential client says, ‘Can you do that?,’ saying ‘yes.’ Then, if I don’t know how to do it, I figure out how to do it quickly. [If] I do know how to do it, I take advantage of it.”

Tobin continues to run his business today, serving a wide range of clients with public and media relations, brand and corporate positioning and marketing communications.

Phil Abrams, class of 1963, business owner

Phil Abrams is one of the first Aragon graduates as part of the inaugural class of 1963. In college, he majored in business and personnel management at San Francisco State University. Later, he took over his father’s formalwear business, ABRAMS FORMAL ATTIRE WAREHOUSE, and expanded it to a chain of 30 stores.

As part of the first graduating class of Aragon, Abrams has fond memories of Aragon.

“[The] real memories are the connections and friends that I made that I still have,” Abrams said. “[We] still [meet on] Zoom every other week. [We are] close because we were the first graduating class, I think that kept us in a special place.”

Throughout Abrams’ life, he has developed a solid philosophy.

“[Care] about your friends and be tolerant,” Abrams said. “If you ask me what’s important in life, it has to do with knowing that you care about others and that you don’t think you have all the answers for everyone else and you have tolerance in your relationships.”

Abrams’ experiences and observations build on his personal philosophy and perspective on life. 

“I think that at 77 or 78 [years] … you realize you don’t have all the answers,” Abrams said. “That’s not a fact. It’s an observation. And the older you get, the more you realize where that time goes.”

Abrams continues to inspire his grandchildren.

Miranda Tezak, class of 1994, supply chain manager

From a history degree to working at Pokémon, Miranda Tezak has experienced a lot. Tezak got a degree in history at Sonoma State University. After college, she worked as a customer service representative for 10 years at a food distribution company. Later, she moved to Seattle and got a new job at Pokémon.

“Part of my job is [to] run the supply chain for the e-commerce business,” Tezak said. I also have been a logistic support for …a department that organizes people to come and play Pokémon around the world.

Tezak gets the opportunity to travel a lot for her job, with a department that organizes people to come play Pokémon around the world. 

“I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to be on the team that helps get [the] products to those events and help set up… and I get to interact with the fans,” Tezak said. “[It’s] exciting. And my most recent travels [were] to Yokohama and London [for two weeks].”

Tezak has an empowering memory from her sophomore year.

“[There] was, at the time, a trial going on for the beating of an African American man [named Rodney King],” Tezak said. “And we decided to march out of school and protest.”

Tezak continues to work at Pokémon as the supply chain manager. 

John de Wood, class of 1963, karmic clearer

John de Wood also graduated in 1963 as one of the students in the first graduating class. He attended the College of San Mateo for a while, majoring in art, and then switched over to Monterey Peninsula College where he learned writing. He also self-learned a lot of concepts for music, writing and video.

Wood played percussion for many local bands. He also played the bass for jazz.

Nowadays, Wood has a karmic clearing business, where he uses a lot of mantras and incense to help cleanse people’s souls and minds.

“I try and encourage others [to be] spiritually present, to be a full human being, not [just] partial or social or familial – include all that,” Wood said. “But you gotta get into the [deep] part of yourself and then that radiates out the chakras, different levels, etc.”

He tries to be understanding and supportive towards his clients, no matter what their history is.

“The whole thing is based on compassion,” Wood said. “And compassion for yourself, compassion for others, compassion for all humans, compassion for all beings, compassion for all world systems, compassion for all universes, you know, multiverses, cosmos, because of the connectivity.”

Wood continues to run his karmic clearing business.