Year: Senior
Major: Finance
Hometown: York, Pennsylvania
Twitter: @AnandGanjam
Anand Ganjam could easily blend in with the rest of the student body when we fill the BJC for THON this year if it wasn’t for his unique role as the voice of over 40,000 students as President of the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA). Since we are juggling our own busy lives, we usually don’t put in the effort to stay informed about all of the local issues, so thankfully we have Anand to do it for us!
HC: So what you brought you to Penn State?
AG: I would say Smeal is the big one. I wanted to do something in the field of business because I joined a few clubs back in high school, but I was always just really looking at the academic side of things. I didn’t know anything besides that though, Penn State wise. I wasn’t always a Penn State fan and didn’t know much about Joe Paterno, even though I knew a lot of people that went to Penn State.
HC: So you always knew you wanted to do something in business? Most people are all over the place their first couple of years.
AG: Yeah, my sophomore year of high school I really got into it by taking some of those extra classes you take in high school.
HC: So how did you know you wanted to join UPUA?
AG: When I first came to Penn State, and during convocation, the student president gave a speech, which really inspired me. He talked about meeting the president, how he was up on stage with the mayor of State College and working on all these policies and I wanted to get involved. I had nothing against student government, I just never really thought of it before.
HC: I bet you never really expected to be president back then.
AG: Well, I thought it would be really cool to one day be standing before people. I’ve always really loved public speaking, I always enjoyed talking to people and I didn’t know what the role was about, but I got involved. I fell in love with UPUA right away and next thing you know…here I am.
HC: While we know you’re president, what exactly do you do for UPUA?
AG: I represent student interests on all major decision-making bodies at Penn State. I spend a lot of time at administrative meetings, I sit in on task forces and sit in on the Board of Trustees as a non-voting member. I also make judgments and bring together a perspective of the student voice, since I am the only student amongst all of these senior administrators and alumni at some meetings. Plus they haven’t been students for many, many years.
HC: Are there any real perks with the job?
AG: There aren’t any real substantial perks, but I do get to do a lot of cool things. I have a lot of access to the administrators, I was invited to spend time in the president’s box at one of the football games, and I get to do a lot of traveling to places like Northwestern, D.C. and Hershey. The THON executive director is also kind enough to give my vice president, Emily McDonald, and I special guest passes to go on the floor.
HC: Do you have any plans for after you graduate? Grad school or job wise?
AG: I have a job set up at Accenture where I will be doing management consulting. My goal was to have a job lined up by Thanksgiving break, so I could spend the rest of my time focusing on UPUA. Luckily, I got the job offer the day before we went on break. I hope to go to grad school in the next three to five years for business administration at some point, but that’s kind of up in the air.
HC: Any long term goals?
AG: I don’t have any long term goals, and I really don’t try to have any. The best advice I was ever given was to never really plan more than two years in advance. Focus on this year and next year and see the opportunities open up.
HC: What do you do when you aren’t at UPUA?
AG: School work comes in there somewhere. I haven’t had a chance to do all of my hobbies, but I like going out downtown with my friends to the bars now that we’re 21. I’m looking forward to House of Cards coming out and Game of Thrones, but I usually just binge watch them over breaks. I also have a girlfriend, Mary Beth, and we are going on 11 months soon, so that is exciting.
HC: What is the legacy that you want to leave behind when you graduate? What is your proudest accomplishment at Penn State?
AG: Probably an initiative I’m still working on called the Student Financial Education Center, a peer-to-peer personal finance group. Students who want to be educators are trained in understanding budgets, loans, credit, and how to manage personal finance and they staff an office so that other students can go to them and get help with their personal finances. I think that it is important to have financial literacy and hopeful it will be useful to students here.
HC: What would be your suggestion to people who want to get involved in UPUA?
AG: Elections are coming up shortly and registration actually opens on Monday. You can run to be an at-large representative where you represent everybody or to be a representative for your academic college. It is a really cool experience and you can make an impact here. I recommend that everyone check it out at http://upua.org.