... Unity Banquet ...

By Diego Dimes, President

It has been 5 long years since the NSBE AE SVC held their last Unity banquet. This was the staple event for the alumni extension in which they gave away scholarships to the best and brightest collegiate and high school NSBE members. This was a special year because it is the first time in 5 years that the NSBE AE SVC has been active. The tech bust destroyed the chapter in early 2000. Since then the new board has been working to revitalize the chapter. When the board decided to have the banquet there were many dissenters. People told us we were too young of a chapter, we weren’t going to be able to get the sponsorship, we didn’t have the membership, maybe we will be ready next year and many other negative remarks. Needless to say we didn’t pay attention to all those who doubted us. The banquet chair Jessica Miller put together an outstanding banquet.

The site of the banquet was a beautiful banquet hall in Sunnyvale, The Historic Del Monte Building. This was not just a hotel with a big room but an actual banquet hall that only caters to large banquets. Leslie Stoval a veteran radio personality from the bay area was the MC for the night. She added a touch of personality to the event.

There was a great mixture of NSBE Alumni, Students and Professionals. Attendees came from the Silicon Valley Alumni Extension, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, San Jose State, Berkeley, San Francisco State, San Jose City College, Canada College as well as from the East Bay PCI chapter. The sponsoring companies: Cisco, Genetech, HP, IBM, J & J, Abbot Vascular, and Kaplan also sent representatives.

The keynote speaker, Forrest Williams, had some strong words for the attendees. He stressed the importance of NSBE stepping up and taking leadership roles in the black community. NSBE represents a large segment of the next generation of black leaders. If NSBE members do not fill the leadership and mentorship roles in the black community many of them will remain unfilled.

Several students left the banquet with a good reason to be happy. Unity scholarships were awarded to 7 deserving collegiate students. The award recipients were each given a $1000 dollar scholarship presented by the sponsoring company. Other smaller dollar amounts were handed out to other students/ persons who excelled in specific categories. Students were awarded in the areas of technical excellence, creative expression, community service, and academic excellence. However, it wasn’t just the college students that benefited on this night. One alumni member left with a $1700 scholarship from Kaplan to pay for grad school prep courses.

The night ended with everyone’s favorite dance, the electric slide. This banquet was a testament to the power and potential that NSBE has. NSBE-AE-SVC was able to go from not having a chapter 10 months ago to hosting a banquet with over 100 attendees; sponsoring attendance of all college and PCI students, and giving away over $9000 in scholarships.

... march general meeting ...

Writer: Angela Adaure Uzoma

Have you heard of Google? Its name is thrown around in the news every now and then, but you know never know with these startups. Well, the little company known as Google hosted our fine organization’s March meeting at their company headquarters in Mountain View. We were greeted with a very warm welcome consisting of correctly-spelled nametags, an abundant breakfast spread, as well as a first-class conference room for our meeting. Our hosts were pleased to be partnered with a NSBE group so…we’re definitely going back! A big round of applause for Miss Sun-Hee and Sir Taylor for playing such lovely hosts!



Molecular Diagnostics…what does that mean? It’s a project that Elvis is working on, and also the title of the presentation he gave at the meeting. In an attempt to introduce more hard-hitting and technologically-focused discussions to our monthly meetings, Elvis bit the bullet and put together an astoundingly detailed and (shockingly…cough, cough…) interesting yet informative explanation of his personal contributions to Cepheid, the company for which he works. Got questions about molecular diagnostics? Talk to the guy in the glasses covered in UCLA paraphernalia.



Also discussed were the changes to the GRE taking place over the summer of this year. A representative from Kaplan (code name: Kaplan Kelly) spent time going over the exact changes that will be incorporated in to the revised version of the GRE.
Breaking News!: It turns out that the new GRE will not happen after all. (No More New GRE!)


The meeting wrapped up with a reminder to sign up for the Walk for Education at nsbe.org and to RSVP for the NSBE Alumni Banquet. Please sign up for both!

... April Banquet ...

The Silicon Valley NSBE Banquet is coming up! The Silicon Valley recognizes the best and the brightest college students in the Silicon Valley area. It provides a forum to network with NSBE members, industry professionals and great young minds. There will be a number of choice companies sponsoring the event … I technically can’t release the names but I’ll be good and drop a hint: Some biiiig companies whose names start with a G, another that starts with an A, the all ever famous H, not forgetting that one company L, and … a pretty good lineup so far. List is still growing ... please pray that I don’t lose my job for leaking this info.


When: April 14th 2007, 6:30PM – 10PM
Where: The Historic Del Monte Building, 100 S. Murphy Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086

Who (Speaker): San Jose City Councilmember Forrest Williams
Who (MC): Leslie Stoval host of 102.9 KBLX's "The Quiet Storm"

How much: Collegiate Students – Free; SV NSBE Members $30; Non Members $55

RSVP HERE

... March Power Lunch ...

Mexican food’s great. Pedro’s is a great restaurant. I guess we made power lunch history by heading back to a location that had already hosted us in the past. For those who don’t recall, the August 2006 power lunch was held at Pedro’s. As always, the food was great and everyone was just feeling extremely comical – Craig … Craig … we’ll leave it at that. What happens at Pedro’s stays at Pedro’s … but I just had to knock on Tari for getting punched the hell out by a comeback comment made by Angela … that was funny … in the spirit of the whole you had to be there to get the benefit of the joke, I’ll leave it at that. Zuberi asked for a special shout out considering this was his first power lunch so ... here's your shout out brother man. Next lunch’s coming up on April 6th. Got a location in mind you would like to propose? Leave a comment.

... february general meeting ...

Cynthia Wesley is a great speaker, that is a given. We were lucky to have her grace our February meeting. Cynthia founded the Black Recruiters Network, BRN, with the primary purpose of providing mentoring and training support to Black Staffing and Human Resource Professionals in Silicon Valley. Her focus on this lovely Saturday was leadership – How to be a leader at work. Several good questions were tabled during the presentation and there were several memorable comments as well. We definitely all know that “testing Devaris’s gangster” isn’t exactly the way to go at work coz he will let the “educated gangsta” out on you.




As always the company was lovely, food great – thanks Jen for the great sandwiches. As far as meetings go, we’re gonna put a spin on the March meeting. The March meeting will be held at Google – Google is sponsoring it all, the food (they got some great chefs), the location, the projector … everything. March 24th 2007, 10PM … you know the location … shouldn’t be too hard to find on Google maps.

... Goodbye Jana ...

Food and drinks: May be $200 or so
Money that changed hands at the poker table: Damn I lost!
Dez hosting Jana’s send off at his place: Priceless
Jana leaving for Toronto: Devastating … aye.


Thursday the 15th of 2007 will definitely be remembered as the day Jana decided to run off from lovely Silicon Valley for the cold unknown and unforgiving slopes of Toronto (we all know the story of the Spanish explorers who got to present day Canada and said “aca nada” which means “nothing here” then turned back to continue exploration of present day Estados Unidos aka USA and South America) … that said, we are still trying to understand why Jana’s moving to Canada – now a move to South America would make sense but Canada … catch my drift, aye?



Regardless of all this, a send-off for Jana was in order as she prepares to veer off into the wilderness of unexplored aca nada. Kindly enough, Dez prepared the goodbye Jana shrine over at his place – quite the memorable night – Emeka and Brittany will definitely be remembered for the elevator Kodak moment scene, we all know that Tari nicknamed the phrase “Jana is cool” and everyone knows that Corey could never break Vegas even with the best good luck charm one could ever ask for (Jana).






We will definitely all remember Jana for the great person she was (and still is) during what felt like a really short stint with the Silicon Valley NSBE Alumni chapter. She always had the smile going, she played every sport you could think of on this earth – MVP a couple times over at soccer, shooting fade away jumpers over Diego, etc. We would like to wish her all her best in her endeavors in Canada and pray that she doesn’t forget us as she gets ready to take over the institution that is Accenture.



Peace out Jana. You are the best and we all love you the mostest.

... February Power Lunch ...

I guess soul food does the trick when it comes drawing the crowd. February’s power lunch at H Butler’s turned out to be the best attended power lunch we’ve had in our 6, 7 month history. We definitely pulled a bigger crew than the last supper crew – too bad our event wont forever be immortalized in lovely paintings that grace walls all over the world but … we try. I would believe that engineers who feel the need to take crazy poses over lunch photos will definitely NOT go into helping the declaration of this lunch event as a historic, landmark, “once in a lifetime”, “you had to be there” occasion … but that is a story for another day.



Intel definitely came out strong and so did Rockwell Collins. It was nice that the Intel people who showed up had never met before (they all work at the same site but … Intel’s huge). Of importance is the opportunity the connection presented and a possible job change opportunity that rolled in as a bonus. Aaaah, the joys of power lunch + soul food. Keep eating, we’ll keep connecting.